Has Psalm 23 saved your life? Or at least your heart? Me too. Here is one of those times.
Come with me for a moment to the waters around Kodiak Island, Alaska. To my first year of commercial salmon fishing with my new fisherman husband.
It’s late, nearly 11 pm and now it’s getting dark. I am on one of our fishing nets alone.
This salmon season there are only five of us running nine long nets around the island. We are exhausted. And tonight we’re in a bind with too many fish and not enough light. Duncan, my husband, has gone in another skiff to finish another net, leaving me here alone near dark to finish extracting the final fish.
I am nearly done. I rest for a few short seconds as the waters of the Gulf of Alaska gently rock the boat. I hear an engine and turn. Out of the dark, I see the glow of a skiff’s bow, Duncan. It’s too dark to see his face, but I recognize his white fishing hat. He throttles down and slows parallel to my skiff.
“Leslie! We’re done! Can you take the skiff to the tender?”
My stomach flips. I’ve only run a boat a few times. Now in the dark with a load of fish?
“Leslie, you have to take it,” he says with urgency. “We can just make it through the spit if you hurry. Otherwise you’ll have to go all the way around the island. Just follow me.
“Okay!” I shout back reluctantly. I know there’s no other way. But I am scared. The spit is a series of boulders across a sand peninsula with just one clear path through. The passage is narrow, unmarked. If you miscalculate, you slam into a boulder or hit the hidden rocks just below the water.
I unhook the net from the boat, pull the outboard to life and I am off heavy with anxiety into this Alaskan night. There’s a moon up there somewhere, pressed dim against the clouds, with just enough light to catch the white of Duncan’s wake ahead of me.
“Help me, Lord,” I say over the din of the engine and the waves. And, unbidden, the words come: The Lord is my shepherd. I see the words, see in my mind a shadowy figure ahead of me. I shall not want. I don’t want anything right now but his presence beside me. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul.
I see a flash of white on my right---the outer part of the reef. I throttle down, steer away. There are boulders on the other side, too. My stomach clenches and I lean forward farther.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I don’t know if I am saying this under my breath or out loud, but I hear the words in my body clearly. I will fear no evil. For your rod and your staff comfort me.
Now I see white on both sides of me, I hear the sucking and gurgling of water against the rocks. I am just feet away from them on both sides. I am holding my breath, I slow to nearly stopping; my own wake urges me forward now through the strait. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
Iam through now, the last rock six feet away on my right. I release the air locked in my lungs, throttle up carefully, eyes ahead on the tender, the larger boat that will take our fish. The lights of the boat blind me but look like the lights of heaven. My cup runneth over.
Later, my fish are finally delivered, and I am on the path up the hill to our bed in the loft. The words trail behind me like my own wake in the night: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Then, up the ladder to our loft—And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And I will try to sleep.
You know this Psalm, I’m sure. Psalm 23 is categorized as a trust psalm. Trust. Who does not need this? Who does not live without uncertainty, fear, apprehension? Aren’t we all heavy laden feeling and finding our way in the dark, sometimes with little but the flash of the wake before us to lead us onward? A friend dies, a husband leaves the marriage, the house burns in a wildfire, a daughter has cancer, work overwhelms. We are disoriented, dislocated. We are not at home in our body, our family, even in our home anymore.
Often in this disruption we lose language as well. We don’t know how to speak or what to say to get back home, to orient to this new reality. What we want and need most in our dislocation is to know the end of the story.
Dear Friend, the Trust psalms take us there. The psalms build a linguistic ladder from the trouble we’re in now to our listening Father on His throne who hears and is ready to rescue. Along the winding, shadowed path of our lives, the psalms remind us that God will always lead us home.