65 Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
as a warrior wakes from the stupor of wine.
66 He beat back his enemies;
he put them to everlasting shame.
67 Then he rejected the tents of Joseph,
he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;
68 but he chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion, which he loved.
69 He built his sanctuary like the heights,
like the earth that he established forever.
70 He chose David his servant
and took him from the sheep pens;
71 from tending the sheep he brought him
to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
of Israel his inheritance.
72 And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
with skillful hands he led them.
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What jumped out at me in this passage is how Asaph uses the “shepherd” image to point to David’s role as leader of the people of God. Asaph presents the reign of David as the high point of the psalm and as an act of God in response to the needs of the people. But he especially points out how David was taken from being a lowly shepherd and raised to become the shepherd of the people of God. It reminds me of Jesus saying to Peter the fisherman that he would become a fisher of men. A little play on words.
Two things about this struck me. The first is how God makes use of people no matter how lowly they might seem. And second, he makes use of that lowliness as a blessing for His mission. David’s time as a lowly shepherd schooled him to be the shepherd of the nation. Peter’s time as a fisher of fish was part of his preparation to be a fisher of men. It’s not just that God raises up the lowly; he makes use of the lowliness itself for the sake of the kingdom.
No matter how lowly and insignificant our lives may seem in the grand scheme of things in the world, our value in the Lord’s sight is beyond estimation. He is able to carry out His work in our lives and through our lives to be a blessing in ways that we cannot begin to imagine.
This leads me to pray this day simply for faithfulness. I pray that I may faithfully live as a child of God in the life that He has placed me, confident that everything I do for the kingdom has significance in God’s hands.
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