Happy New Year’s! This reflection is a brief departure from our journey through Romans. Thank you for reading the Hypocritical Christian. If you enjoy what you find, please let others know where to find it.

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

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.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

At some point over the past year, I began praying Psalm 23 almost daily. When I am at work, I typically have to park about a quarter mile from my workstation. I often pray this psalm to myself on my journey to the car for lunch. When you are paid by commission sales you have frequent motivation to pray!

I cannot speak for any other part of the world, but in the United States this may be the most famous passage of scripture in the Bible. John 3:16 used to be seen on signs on all the football telecasts but given that almost every person in my country has attended a funeral, and psalm 23 is the most common funeral passage, the percentage of Americans who can recognize the psalm approaches one hundred percent. Such familiarity does not breed contempt in this case, rather psalm 23 is beloved.

Beloved for good reason. The psalm, particularly in its final stanza, is a source of comfort and encouragement for those who are grieving a lost loved one. Their collective hope is that the person is already dwelling in the house of the Lord surrounded by the goodness and mercy. The fact that for years I thought of this psalm in the context of funerals conditioned me to read it and hear it a certain way.

That changed for me recently. As I mentioned, I walk to the parking lot reciting the psalm to myself. One day as I went, I was momentarily distracted at this point in the psalm: he restores my soul. Distraction over I resumed where I had left off and then an epiphany.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.

Wait!

What!?!

The psalm is always read as though the paths of righteousness is tied to the restoration of the soul as though that completes the first thought of the psalm. Read this way, the walk through the valley of the shadow of death is the beginning of a new thought. The verse breakdown and numbering work along this same thought process. Verses numbers are helpful, and they are assigned intelligently and grammatically, but that doesn’t mean they are not imposed on the original text in a way that is ultimately arbitrary.

What if we were to read the psalm in the manner of my accidental recitation? Is it possible that the psalm all along has been trying to teach me that the paths of righteousness include a journey through the valley of death? Much smarter people than I have studied the psalms and can explain the rhyme and meter of Ancient Hebrew poetry. I am not suggesting that we rearrange the versification of the psalm although it would end up looking like this:

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul.

He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil.

You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.

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

What does it mean that the paths of righteousness are a walk through the “valley of the shadow of death”? For one, it is a reminder that if you choose to walk the narrow way and look for the straight gate that Jesus spoke of, then you can expect some danger. To follow the Lord closely invites a world wholly antithetical to God to lash out at you. Persecution is to be expected Jesus warned, saying to his disciples that because they love him the world will hate them. “Fear not, for I have overcome the world (John 16:31)” is his reassurance to us all.

He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake…I fear no evil…you are with me.

Reading the psalm this way guides us into trusting the Good Shepherd when we are confronted by a world at odds with our beliefs. Furthermore, the psalm is also a reminder of the true nature of the world and this life. The path is described as the valley of the Shadow of Death. The reality of death permeates the journey of life. Regardless of the hour or the day, our mortality is an ever-present reality. To deny the reality of death is to fail to understand the curse on creation caused by sin. The “wages of sin is death” Paul writes in Romans and also that “all of creation was subject to futility” because of sin. This is a world and a life that is awaiting the Good Shepherd’s return when all of this is set to right. A return that will culminate in death and sin becoming nonexistent. If you sang Joy to the World on Christmas Eve, this is precisely the meaning of “he makes his blessings known as far as the curse is found.”

Each of us goes through every day surrounded by the threat of death. A crippling anxiety would overcome us if we contemplated all the different ways in which we could die even in the first of hour of our day. I once nearly choked to death on a piece of lint in the back of my throat on a Sunday morning. But following Jesus and taking on his name and his redemption for us frees us from such anxiety for we now are the ones who have a shepherd whose rod and staff comfort us.

The Christian life is not one that is free from misery.

The Christian life is not one that is free from consequences of our poor decisions.

The Christians life is one of hope and is meant to be lived free from fear.

The psalm reminds us that the valley of the shadow surrounds us, but we will find green pastures and still waters in the midst of it all. Our Shepherd will protect and comfort us. Most of all the Christian life is meant to be one of hope.

Hope because in the end the character of God is what provides the protection and the guidance and the promise of everlasting life.

Surely goodness and lovingkindess will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

May you know this truth throughout 2025, amen.