January 2025
So many voices can be heard of people who are anxious and fearful approaching the new and unexplored year of 2025; here’s a guiding principle and promise to help us face the future, whatever it holds, with absolute confidence and unshakable hope:
“The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”
David may have written this song while he was a teenager, keeping watch over his father’s sheep on the hills of Judea. If so, he displayed the wisdom of a much older and more mature man when he reflected on Who would be his Guardian and Guide as he faced the years before him.
He declares emphatically: YAHWEH is my Shepherd! Surely, he recalled this most holy name of God within its historical context, remembering the story of the burning bush and the call of God to Moses to lead His people out of the slave labor pits of Egypt. Commentary writers tell us the name is a combination of three tenses of the Hebrew verb “to be.” Yehi (“He will be”) – that’s the future. Hove (“being”) – that’s the present. Hahyah (“He was”) – that’s the past. The meaning is clear: He was God in eternity past, He is God in the seeable present and He will always be God in eternity future.
The same God Who plagued Egypt with ten tragic tests, Who split the waters of the Red Sea, Who led the nation through the wilderness with a pillar of cloud and provided bread from heaven for forty years – that same God was David’s personal Shepherd! If He took care of an entire nation of people (some say 4 million souls) through such interruptive and magnificent displays of His ability to provide, it was certain He could and would take care of David; he harbored no doubt about it.
“I shall not want,” according to W. Phillip Keller, is a shepherd’s way of saying, “I shall be under the careful and expert supervision” of One Who will provide all I need to face whatever the future has for me.
David took this promise with him onto the field of battle against Goliath, in the face of the furious jealousy of King Saul, and onto the throne when they settled the crown on his head as the new king.
2025 will hold challenges for each one of us; let’s face them with the courage and confidence of young David and speak truth to our soul: “YAHWEH is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”
Dr. Lynn Hardaway
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