A Psalm Enshrined Too Long

As I parked my car in front of a big city hospital in Miami, one of our best-loved physicians came down the steps and started toward his car. It happened that it was very near mine, so, I waited. When he came close, I noticed that his lips were moving as though he were talking. With a grin, I said, “Bascom, you are too young to be talking to yourself.”

He smiled, “I wasn’t talking to myself. I was saying the twenty-third Psalm.” Maybe the expression of surprise and delight on my face made him continue. “I just came from the room of a little old saint on the fourth floor who can’t live much longer. She asked me if I knew the twenty-third Psalm. When I told her I claimed it as my very own and that I leaned on it every day, she replied, “Let’s say it together.” ”

His voice was a little husky when he asked, “Didn’t Jesus call himself the Good Shepherd? Wasn’t he talking about himself when he pictured the shepherd’s going into the mountains after that one sheep that didn’t come in?” Then very slowly he quoted the first few verses, “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.” Thoughtfully he added, “This twenty-third Psalm has been enshrined on a marble pedestal too long. We need to take it down and break it up and use it. It’s something to live with and live by.”
~ C. Roy Angell