There is hardly a person who doesn’t know Psalm 23, the shepherd’s psalm and we invariably read it to receive comfort from our Good Shepherd. However, we can also learn from this beloved psalm how to mother own little, or big flock. Mothering is very similar to shepherding and encompasses all the aspects of shepherding and tending to a flock.
Shall we look at it again today? I’m reading the New English Translation this time:
“The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”
Mothing is not a little task. It is HUGE. It is ministering to our children body soul, and spirit. They can confess that they lack nothing, not only in being clothed and fed bodily, but spiritually and mentally. We not only tend to the bodily needs of our children but to the inner man. That’s even more important than the outer man.
Many mothers feel they can manage motherhood doing the necessity of providing food and clothing for their children. But oh, there is far more to mothering that this. It is feeding the soul, the mind, and the spirit. This takes far more time than the bodily needs. Many children are adequately provided with food and clothing (most probably far more than they need), but who are starving spiritually.
“He takes me to lush pastures.”
Where are you taking your children today dearest mother? The true shepherd leads his sheep to “good and lush pastures.” Do you notice that He leads them? He doesn’t let them go where they want to go for the sheep don’t know what is best for them.
Are you leading your children? Are you taking them to what is best for them? So many children and teens today are left to the devices of the Internet and Social Media. They feed on them. Their iPhones are hardly out of their hands. The sad thing is that they get so full on all this junk that they have no appetite for what is good.
In the natural, if we feed up on junk foods, sweet foods, and fast foods, we’ll fill up and have no desire to have some good wholesome food of vegetables, fruit, and home-cooked meals.
We must watch that our children don’t get filled up on all the junk that is available today. They are so filled up on the junk, they have no appetite for the spiritual. They need to be starved from the junk, so they’ll get a thirst for the good food again. We must re-awaken in ourselves and in our children a hunger and thirst for the good and the spiritual. Jesus said in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are they which do HUNGER AND THIRST after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
God promises in Isaiah 44:3: “I will pour water upon him that is THIRSTY, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”
But this promise is to the THIRSTY! If they are not thirsty and instead are filled with all the junk of this world, they will not be ready to receive the blessings.
Dear mothers, it is our responsibility to keep them thirsty for the good food of wholesome truth and lead them to the lush food God wants to pour into them.
Talking about God’s way Isaiah 35:6, 7 says: “And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the THIRSTY land springs of water . . . And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness: the unclean shall not pass over it.” God’s way is not the way of the world; it’s the way of holiness, cleanness, and wholesomeness.
The Shepherd chapter in Ezekiel 34: 14, 15 says: “I will feed them in a GOOD pasture, and upon HIGH MOUNTAINS of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a GOOD fold, and in a FAT pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God.”
As the shepherdess of your home, where are your leading your children today? What are you doing to feed their minds, souls, and spirits as well as their bodies?
Love from Nancy Campbell
Painting: Springtime (also known as Le Printemps), Charles-Émile Jacque – 1859.