Submitted by KCH’s Rev. Dr. Diana Leaf, Chaplain
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. – Psalm 23.1 (NIV)
A mother is trying to teach her daughter to be suspicious of commercials. When an ad breaks in on the YouTube video they’re watching, she’ll talk back to the screen: “We already have a car!” or “Why would I buy another cellphone? Mine works perfectly well!”
She recognizes it’s obnoxious but she’s delighted when her daughter picks up the habit: “We don’t need any more clothes! We’re already wearing them!”
She wants to instill a sense of gratitude and sufficiency in her daughter to combat the story of emptiness and need that the world is trying to sell her. When the nagging voice of consumerism tries to undermine her happiness, the mother wants the child to be able to shout back, “I lack nothing!” and mean it.
Of course, the psalmist is talking about something more radical.
Not just the comfort of a white, middle-class American family that has already acquired an over-abundance of material goods. But a deeper sufficiency that was true before we had cars, or phones, or even clothes. That was true when we were naked in a garden. And will be true still when it all goes away in the twinkling of an eye.
Perhaps God is trying to teach us. Shouting over all the voices we turn to when we start to believe we are empty: food, and booze, and entertainment, and work, and ego, and novelty, and…
“Why would you need any of that? You already have me!”
Prayer
The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing.