A special treat for you all. A gentleman I have gotten to know through my church has offered to share his writings on this blog. His name is Lee Walters. He is a retired US Air Force Chaplain. Keep us in your prayers. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Lee Walters.
Have you ever looked out the window of an airplane at the
ground passing under you? Way down there
are roads, cars, buildings, houses and, invisible to you at that height,
people. Have you ever wondered what you
were missing? I mean, you have to be
missing a lot. There are all kinds of
things to see and do down there that you will never know anything about because
you are soaring way overhead at hundreds of miles an hour. Life is a lot like that. We get terribly busy and we start to miss
some important things as we fly through our daily routines.
The 23rd Psalm contains some of the most
familiar, comforting and beautiful words in the Bible.
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He
makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. 3 He
restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s
sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff,
they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the
presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my
life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
In case there is any question about who the shepherd is,
in John 10:11 Jesus said, I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd
lays down His life for the sheep.
Psalm 22-24 make up a triptych of psalms that belong together. In Psalm
22 we see the cross of the Savior. Jesus lays down His life for the
sheep. In Psalm 23 we see the shepherd’s crook as He
leads us through this life, leading, guiding and conforming us into His
image. And in Psalm 24 we see the Sovereign
King’s crown. In Psalm 22 He dies; In
Psalm 23 He is living and in Psalm 24 He is coming again to reign.
The 23rd Psalm is also informative. The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not be in
want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul. This is my favorite picture of my relationship
with the Lord: I love Him. He is my
shepherd and I am His sheep. But,
calling me a sheep is not the most complimentary thing that can be said about
me. A modern sheep rancher destroys the
myth of sheep being nice, sweet, helpless little animals when he said, “These sheep are stubborn, hardheaded, and
pig headed animals. Besides that, they are dirty and filthy.” That is a picture of the human race. I apparently need a lot of help from Him for
my daily life because my chances of living my life pleasing to Him on my own
are zero.
Now there is an unusual ministry that the shepherd has in
our lives. I call it the ministry of enforced slowdown.
It says; He makes me lie down. It’s
like I don’t have enough sense to slow down and smell the roses so I have to be
forced to slow down at times. And where
does He force me to lie down? Not in a
bad place; it’s in green pastures. And
He makes you lie down to see some things I could never see when I’m running
through or flying over.
Now, the Lord has many means of making us lie down or at
least to get us to slow down. I've
experienced a few. He's got medical
brakes that He steps on to slow you down, financial brakes, family brakes; all situations
that forces us to stop and give it attention; some circumstance which comes
along that forces us to go slower. Then
there is the retirement brake and the old age brake which allows us to go
slower from now on.
When one of these situations hits our lives we tend to grumble
and resist every step of the way. But
God has things for us to see that we're missing when we go through life at full
throttle. Maybe we have been missing the
person we are married to, and God is saying, “Slow down! Rediscover the treasure I gave you in this person.” Maybe we’ve been missing the daily drama of
our child growing up right before your eyes; days we can never get back. God is putting on the brakes so we can get to
know our son or daughter. Unfortunately,
it seems that a crisis is what brings a family closer to each other.
Possibly you've been missing quality time with the Lord
Himself, and God is saying, Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm
46:11) Retirement has afforded me time
to spend with the Lord like I never had before; to get to know Him more
intimately. It is hard to “be busy and
know.” We can be flying right past our
Lord day after day. In the confusion of
a busy life our priorities got jumbled. At
the speed we've been traveling, we can't even see the faces of people. In fact some of us are flying so high and so
fast that we can’t even see people. We
can't hear what they're saying. We can't enjoy the journey because we are so
obsessed with the destination. So in His
love, the Shepherd has declared a slowdown for me. I have embraced it!
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