Praying the 23rd Psalm

The Lord is my Shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.....

What is it I really "want" now?  What is my deepest need?  If the Scripture says, "there is nothing I shall want," what is it talking about? 

Most of us have a restless energy of some kind.  There is "something" we want, we need at the deepest level of our persons---something we need to be settled, to be at peace with ourselves and with others.  Something we need to establish our lives for the future.  What is that thing?  Can we identify it?  Does it have a name in our consciousness?

If we don't know what it is we lack, how then can we look to the Lord for its supply?  First, we need the light of grace to identify what it is we truly need; we need the Holy Spirit to help us give it a name.  We may be trying again and again to "fill ourselves up" with things that fail to truly satisfy us because we fail to recognize what we are really looking for.

When I was 19, I recognized within myself a vague longing for a close friend.  It was something that took a long time for me to "name," because at that time, I had many good companions.  I could enjoy being with almost any group of people, but I wanted something more, something that I had not yet experienced.  I wanted to be able to share the deepest part of myself with someone else; I was never satisfied with conversation that was mostly narrative.  I was always kind of bored with "what happened."  What I most needed was a philosopher-friend---someone who was more invested in what happens than in what happened. 

When I was finally able to identify what it was I needed, someone said to me, "The kind of friend you are looking for is a gift from God; you have to ask Him for it."  What a revelation that was!  I had been jealous of people who seemed to have close friendships, yet I had never thought to ask God for what I most deeply wanted.

Nor had I yet learned what C.S. Lewis defines as "friendship"--two or more people passionate about the same thing.  Most of us want a friend, but we have failed to develop the deep passions that draw others to us.  Most of us live in a matrix of companionship---people vested in the same enterprise--school, work, clubs, sports, etc.  Within that matrix, we will usually stumble across one or two others who share the same passions we do.  Friendship is not about two people looking at one another, but about two people looking at something deeply important to both.  They both agree that this thing is important---even if, as Lewis says, the "thing" is simply stamp collecting.  So, as we develop our deep interests and passions, we are also building a house where certain people will want to come and share those passions with us.

What is it we need?  We may need the Lord to help us name it so that He can then supply it to us, just as the shepherd must supply everything for the sheep.  He knows what they need more than they do---sheep cannot forage for themselves as for example, cayotes or other wild animals, as even a cat left outside overnight can do.  The sheep are totally dependent on the Shepherd for grazing, for water, for safety---they cannot even defend themselves against attack.

If we take the Lord for our Shepherd, He Himself will have to identify our deepest needs, help us to see what they are, and then supply them for us so that we can truly say, "there is nothing I shall need...."