Yea Though I Walk

Good evening!

Those of you who know me know that it is not often that I am given pause to consider scripture. However, this evening, I was taking a walk and I think I finally understood the imagery in Psalm 23. The full text of the Psalm is:

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

This psalm is particularly important to me emotionally because my mother once embroidered a bit of...I don't know, it was like a miniature blanket or something that she then framed and gave to my grandmother, her mother as a gift. My mother embroidered this psalm on some cloth once and reading it at my grandparents' was my first exposure to Christianity. 

As the title of this post suggests, I am focused primarily with the meaning of the line "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death."

While I was walking today, I was walking beneath a hill that blocks the sun at sunset. This made me think of walking in the valley of the shadow of death. It used to be that I thought that line meant "the valley of death," that in life we walked along a ridge and if we stumbled, we'd fall to the bottom of the valley and probably snap our neck on the way down. However, thinking about it logically, if you were walking in the valley of the shadow of death, assuming a translation error allowing for "in the valley in the shadow of death" then we are actually walking at the very bottom of the valley, and death is casting a shadow over us. In fact, death is such a daunting, fearful mountain that dominates our consciousness so completely that it casts a shadow that blinds us to the path that leads us safely through the valley. The only light we can see walking through the valley in the shadow of death is the light of "life everlasting" promised to us at the end. 

I think one way to interpret the psalmist's imagery is to say that death casts such a dark, impenetrable shadow that we can't see our feet or the ground we're stepping on. Whether we are walking on the right path or not, every step we take toward the light promising everlasting peace at the end of the valley is an act of faith. Faith that God will lift the path up to meet us (stole that metaphor from an Irish "have a nice day" saying).

I guess what I'm saying is "our knowledge of our own mortality and fear of our own death constricts our view so much that we can't see the right path forward without faith." From there, you can say "if you confront and accept death, its shadow decreases and you can see the way forward" or just stick with "you've gotta have faith." 

Whichever way you choose, you'll probably get where you're heading.

P.S. The way I said this all in my head on my walk was WAY better than what I wrote here.