HYMN FOR EASTER 4 The Lord my Shepherd is
- Gracia Grindal
- May 5
- 3 min read
Updated: May 8
Text: Isaac Watts Tune: Magnolia
The Lord my shepherd is,
I shall be well supplied
;since he is mine and I am his,
what can I want beside?
He leads me to the place
where heavenly pasture grows,
where living waters gently pass,
and full salvation flows.
If e’er I go astray,
he will my soul reclaim,
and guide me in his own right way
for his most holy Name.
In sight of all my foes
you will a table spread
:my cup with blessings overflows,
and joy exalts my head.
The bounties of your love
shall crown my following days;
nor from your house will I remove,
nor cease to speak your praise!
REFLECTION
Jesus in John 10 refers to himself as the Good Shepherd and speaks of how his sheep know his voice. We know that sheep will not answer another’s voice, only their shepherd’s. When one reads the calling of the disciples with that in mind it is no wonder that when he calls Peter and Andrew and the others, they immediately leave their fishing nets and follow. They did not know it at the time, but that voice was the voice of their creator now speaking in the voice of Jesus. In fact, Jesus ends up this lesson by telling us he and the Father are one. So how could the disciples resist?
One simply knows the sound of God’s voice is authentic. Today the air spaces are filled with voices of all kinds and most of them completely fake or inauthentic. While people may be attracted to a voice that is promising something they might desire, something in them can tell the voice is false. In fact, if you think about it, we judge people by their voices. If they are grating or irritating we find it hard to listen. And will judge whether or not the voice is speaking the truth.
The devil is an imitator and will try to imitate God’s voice, but those attuned to the real shepherd’s voice can hear the father of lies there. We should pray daily that we are attuned to our shepherd’s voice and ready to follow it wherever we go. Augustine says that Jesus is not only the country where we belong, but the way there. (See the hymn below.) Because where he goes are green pastures and life.
HYMN INFO
Isaac Watts wrote a couple hymns using Psalm 23 as his base. One can see in his spare language and careful technique how well he has paraphrased and updated the psalm for his time and place. Watts had inherited the Calvinist tradition of exact paraphrases of the psalter into English. The psalters were the hymnal for the early European settlers in American from the Massachusetts Bay colony to the Hugenots in Maryland. The Bay colony in 1640 produced the first book written and published in the colonies, the Bay Psalm Book. They created paraphrases for all 150 psalms and were careful not to leave out a jot or tittle of the original. An incredible feat. That these Puritan divines, now an ocean away from libraries and other resources, had the time and intellect to translate into English from the original Hebrew and make English verse out of the translations boggles the mind. They did not shrink from the violence and revenge that one encounters in the psalter. Isaac Watts, however, did. So he loosened up the psalms he used and wrote what were called Christianized versions of the psalms, creating the English tradition of hymnody, not psalmody. He is to be admired. His work became the primal English approach to hymns that still reigns today. When I asked students in my classes to write a hymn using a psalm as a base, which was usually my first assignment in hymn writing class, the forms they would instinctively turn to were the Watts’ English ballad forms.
LINKS
A capella hymns
Congregation singing the hymn
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