The Shepherd Is In Your Valley

There is a swinging pendulum of opinions about safety, opening back up or shutting back down, COVID testing, PPE, equality, social justice and, a lot more. It’s no surprise that worry and fear is a reasonable response to what’s happening in our world. 

Recently, I’ve talked with several pastors and they say that the common thread among their churches is anxiety and fear. They’re not worried about their health and safety, so much as they are about job security and this month’s bills, rent or mortgage? Will their kids go to school in the fall? Are my savings at risk? Should we cancel vacations and business trips and not visit older loves ones.

The non-stop angry divisiveness and violence in our country fosters even more anxiety. The list of anxieties is long, but they’re not new. All of us have experienced anxiety, disappointment, and grief. If we're honest we’ve also felt lost before for a variety of reasons, in not knowing what to do or where to go or who to talk to.

Being lost is not just a GPS malfunction
Too many know what it means to be disconnected, discounted, diminished, or demeaned. Life has many dark valleys through which we must walk. When we do feel lost, we need someone to show us the way back home. A good shepherd will leave the ninety-nine sheep to find the lost one.  

In the winter shepherds in mountainous areas usually keep their sheep at home. There's usually a fenced area where they can graze and where they are fed grain. But when the snows subside in the mountains, it is then that the shepherds take their flocks and move with the snowmelt up the mountain, there finding fresh pasture land, eventually moving up to the timberline. Above the timberline, there are all types of pastures that are green and fresh. The air is clean. The water is clear.

In the summer shepherds usually won't even go home. They'll just sleep out with their sheep at night. It’s shepherd's responsibility to care for them, to know the canyons and the valleys, to scout them out, to know where the dangers are, and to pick the path that, while still dangerous is the safest path of all.

The shepherd protects the sheep from predators and provides their nourishment
If a lamb deliberately walks away, the shepherd searches near and far to get that lamb back. He’ll use his staff to redirect the sheep who get off course. A shepherd notches the ear of a lamb born to his flock because he has rightful ownership of it. They are His.

To the shepherd, the sheep are not just a number, but a face, a name and, a story. The Good Shepherd knows your name, your life and He knows what’s best for you. He’s proven Himself and is worthy of your trust.

We all have deep, dark valleys of our own experiences and we don't all call them by the same name. Make your own list. What are those things that you fear? It doesn't take any of us long to come up with a list of what could happen.

Here’s the deal: What I need to do is what we all need to do: trust the shepherd.
The Lord is God, he is in charge, and he is in control. He knows things that we would never be able to know. He's close. He understands. He has it all figured out. He is greater than the greatest difficulty. He is more powerful than the deepest and the darkest of your valleys.

He's there with you even when it’s so dark you can’t see. The Lord will do the job that a shepherd is supposed to do. He will do what he is capable of doing and he promises that he will be with you and never leave you. He will find you and take you home with Him. If you’ve been wounded or sick, He’ll pick you up and carry you all the way home.

In Psalms 23, notice the personal pronouns of "I" walk through the valley…"My" shepherd. "You" are there. It is one-on-one with God. The Good Shepherd is always there with you. He sticks closer than the best of friends.

When you walk through that dark deep valley, be sure to be the Lord's sheep, to claim him as your shepherd, to trust him alone to get you through. When he is so trusted, he who is always there will be with you even until the ends of the earth.

Simeon's Song of Waiting

A journalist assigned to the Jerusalem bureau takes an apartment overlooking the Wailing Wall. Every day when she looks out, she sees an old Jewish man praying vigorously. So, the journalist goes down and introduces herself to the old man.

She asks, "You come every day to the wall. How long have you done that, and what are you praying for?" The old man replies, "I have come here to pray every day for 25 years. In the morning I pray for world peace and then for the brotherhood of man. I go home, have a cup of tea, and I come back and pray for the eradication of illness and disease from the earth."

The journalist is amazed. "How does it make you feel to come here every day for 25 years and pray for these things?" she asks. The old man looks at her sadly. "Like I'm talking to a wall."

Simeon was another devout Jewish man who had been waiting for years to see Israel’s Messiah. Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation (comfort) of Israel. Luke 2:2 He was part of a community of faithful people in Israel who were patiently waiting and keeping the hope alive that their Messiah would come.

We all have waited for somethingSimeon waited for decades, but if he had given up on waiting he would have missed the moment God had ordained. I don’t know how long you will have to wait for something, but what does matters is who you are becoming while you are waiting. Like Simeon, we hope for a new day or a new beginning. Over six hundred years before Simeon the prophet Isaiah encouraged Israel with these words.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.    Isaiah 43:19

Since we all need hope and comfort in our lives then we’ll want to learn from Simeon’s song of redemption. God entered human history to bring light to a very dark and broken world through the birth of His son. God invaded our world to occupy the human heart. He does not need our money, looks, talent, connections, clout or fame. Those things just kind of get in the way.

In ‘Mary’s Magnificant she sang, “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:53 You see humility is honesty. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. 1 Peter 5:8 We don’t have anything to give Him that He needs, but he does want to occupy our heart and once he does He desires to take up more territory.

God kept His promise that he would send the Messiah.When you place your hope in God’s faithfulness to keep His promises you’ll discover that what’s important is who you are becoming while you wait. 

Billy Graham was interviewed about his new book ‘Nearing Home’ and was asked, “What has been the biggest surprise of your life?”Billy’s response, ”Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life. I’ve been told how to die as a Christian, but no one told me how to grow old.”

When Billy’s wife died she what she chose to put on her gravestone had nothing to do with all her remarkable achievements, it had to do with the fact that as long as we live God will be working on us while we wait.

In this life we all wait, we're all under construction.
Don’t lose heart, don’t give up! The glorious invasion of earth by the Lord Jesus that began two thousand years ago is not done, it continues. He’ll occupy more hearts and homes and we get to be part of it!

Will you sing a song of redemption along with Simeon while you wait, one that is filled with hope in the promises of God? As we learned from our four songs of winter sung over the centuries, God’s greatness and His undeserved grace are big enough to meet our needs!


We have much reason to sing even in the winters of our discontent.God sent His Son as prophesied and because he has proven Himself faithful to keep His promises He will come again as he said! While we wait may we proclaim His grace and peace to those around us this season and every day. If you haven’t made room for Him ask Him to occupy your heart and you’ll finally really come home.

Is That All There Is To Thanksgiving?

Is Thanksgiving more than a day off, a parade, football and a meal that takes hours to prepare and few minutes to eat? Can it be more than that?

In the fall of 1621 just over 50 colonists attended the meal that became Thanksgiving including 22 men, four married women and more than 25 children and teenagers. These were the fortunate ones who had made it through the rough voyage across the Atlantic into the New World. They made it through the extreme harsh winter during which disease took the lives of nearly half the original group.

The majority of the women who had arrived on the Mayflower had died during the first winter. For the English the first Thanksgiving was celebrating that they had survived their first year in New England. The Plymouth colonists were likely outnumbered more than two-to-one at the event by their Native American guests.

While the 1621 event may not have been called Thanksgiving, thanksgiving was certainly present in that historic celebration, just as it would play a defining role in how the tradition developed over the centuries.  

Like the original colonist few have understood the power of giving thanks as thoroughly as Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and novelist. Here’s what Wiesel said on the Oprah Winfrey show:

OPRAH: “There may be no better person than you to speak about living with gratitude. Despite all the tragedy you've witnessed, do you still have a place inside you for gratefulness?”

ELIE: “Absolutely. Right after the war, I went around telling people, "Thank you just for living, for being human." And to this day, the words that come most frequently from my lips are, "Thank you." When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

We hear a lot about being thankful, but living a life of gratitude isn’t easy. It requires time, effort and faithful practice.

“Without effort, feelings of gratitude are often fleeting, passing as quickly as they come. For example, I’m grateful to have a clean bill of health but gripe as soon as a cold interferes with my busy life. I have a kitchen filled with food but complain about cooking and closet filled with clothes but, “nothing to wear.”                                                                                                                                 Tiffany Musik Matthews 

Gratitude takes a conscious effort. In order to be grateful, we must first take the time to recognize that something has been done for our benefit. The culture’s prevalent attitude, ‘of what have you done for me lately,’ reflects expectation not gratitude.

Gratitude is reflected in acts of kindness and generosity and is an indicator that something good has taken place. Is there a difference between experiencing a warm, fuzzy feeling from time to time and living a life of gratitude? Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of psychology at UC Davis says,

“Feeling grateful is not the same as being a grateful person, a grateful person is one who regularly affirms the goodness in his or her life and recognizes that the sources of this goodness lie at least partially outside of themselves.” Notice that Emmons says outside ourselves, not from us or because of us.

Those with a grateful heart feel more intensely grateful, on a regular basis, for multiple things, toward multiple people. While being grateful for positive events or moments of good fortune seems simple, but having a disposition toward gratitude suggests something more. For a Christ follower a grateful heart is being thankful for salvation and for God’s blessings, but it is also able to be grateful in difficult circumstances.

Being truly grateful extends beyond convenience. As receivers of salvation and divine grace, we should strive to be grateful in all seasons of our lives. Titus 3:4-5. The evidence is clear that cultivating gratitude in our lives makes us happier and healthier people, but practicing gratitude is easier said than done. 

We can all find reasons to be grateful, but unfortunately it’s more difficult to be appreciative of others. Kelsy Richardson, who is currently conducting graduate research on gratitude at Fuller Seminary, named pride as a major deterrent to gratitude said, “You would think that the opposite of being grateful is being ungrateful, but it’s actually selfishness or self-conceit. When you believe you deserve the good things you receive, you don’t feel the need to be grateful to others.”

In today’s age of entitlement many are mistaken to think that all social problems, economic insecurity, poverty, racism and even their own discomfort will end today or tomorrow. Many have come to expect that their lives should have less discomfort, but we are not God and cannot guarantee what we desire. Gratitude also goes against our need to feel in control of our environment. “Sometimes with gratitude you just have to accept life as it is and be grateful for what you have,” says Emmons.

In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy. Brother David Steindl-Rast