Jesus’ Loving-Kindness as our Good Shepherd

Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever. 

Psalm 23.6

Life never ceases to reveal our need to depend on Him. Surely without Jesus being our Good Shepherd (John 10) we would be lost little sheep. As it is, He IS always filling our lives with His loving-kindness and mercy, so we are always found and filled little sheep (Matthew 10.42; 18.11-14). Ah the steadfast love of the Lord!

When we trust in Jesus (Romans 10.9; 1 Peter 1.17-21) we accept the reality that HE HAS FOUND US and His Holy Spirit fills us to give us His abundant life (Ephesians 1.12-14; John 10.10). [That is a good thing to remember as we go through our days in this season of having just celebrated Pentecost (Acts 2).] I love the way that Eugene Peterson in The Message gets the emphasis of Psalm 23.6a correct: that God is the one pursuing us, “Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.”

Push comes to shove when we go through those dark and difficult times. Will we submit to the authority of Jesus by simply accepting His loving-kindness and mercy. That is not to say we have to be fake with our emotions. Look at the rest of the Psalms, we can be “real” with God. Two questions: will we take our cathartic outpouring to Jesus? will we come back to dwell in His loving-kindness (note it is OK with this takes a while, the pain and hurt in this life is real and cuts deep).

“…the Psalms…invite us into a more honest facing of the darkness. The reason the darkness may be faced and lived in is that even in the darkness, there is One to address. The One to address is in the darkness but is not simply a part of the darkness (John 1.1–5). Because this One has promised to be in the darkness with us, we find the darkness strangely transformed, not by the power of easy light, but by the power of relentless solidarity. Out of the “fear not” of that One spoken in the darkness, we are marvelously given new life, we know not how. The Psalms are a boundary (Jeremiah 5.22) thrown up against self-deception. They do not permit us to ignore and deny the darkness, personally or publicly, for that is where new life is given, whether on the third day or by some other uncontrolled schedule at work among us.”

Walter Brueggemann. Spirituality of the Psalms.

I love the reference in Brueggemann’s quote to the resurrection. Friends, may we live under the authority of Jesus’ great care and provisions for us. May we live in His abundant resurrection life, even “through the darkest valley” (Psalm 23.4). We will dwell with Him in His house forever (Psalm 23.6), AND His Spirit is dwelling with us NOW; so let us abide in His loving-kindness today!