Through the Valley

Every line of this Psalm has been embroidered on a thousand walls, and the danger of a verse so loved is that we stop hearing what it actually says. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." Through. Not around. The Shepherd does not promise a route that skirts the dark gorge. He says we will walk into it, and our feet will move on the floor of the shadow, and the rocks of fear will rise on either side. What He promises is not the absence of the valley but His presence in it. "I will fear no evil, for you are with me." The little word that changes everything is not for, it is with. He does not stand at the top of the canyon shouting directions. He is in the valley with His sheep, His rod between us and what wants to eat us, His staff hooking us back when we wander toward the cliff.

And the church has long heard one footstep ahead of hers on the floor of this valley. There is a Shepherd who has walked the whole valley before us, in body — the valley of the deepest shadow there is — and He has come up the other side alive. He laid down His own life for the sheep; He took it up again; He still bears the marks of the climb in His risen hands. When we walk the valley now we are not walking it alone, and we are not walking it as the first to try. We are walking it with the Shepherd whose feet know every stone of it. The table at the end of the Psalm is already spread; the cup is already overflowing; the house of the LORD is already ours forever. The Shepherd has secured every line. Walk on, friend. The valley does not get the last word; the Shepherd does, and the Shepherd is risen.