Psalm 23 - Left in Our Wake

Plus Psunday Psalm Psummary

Feb 16, 2025

It is pretty hard to find something I haven’t previously seen in this Psalm. But it happened. While I have other Psalms that are more of favorites for me, there is probably no Psalm that I have read or shared more than Psalm 23. My guess is that at least 75% of the funerals I have led have used Psalm 23 in one form or another. Add in the number of times I have read it in other times (in regular Sunday services, in pastoral care visits, in personal reading, etc) is high. Very high. (to quote K-2S0 in Star Wars: Rogue One).

Ok - so this Psalm is a song/poem about God’s guidance, protection, and providing. It is beautiful. Encouraging. Hopeful. But here’s what I saw.

Verses 1-5 are all about what God is doing. God is the shepherd. God leads. God refreshes. God provides. God is with. God shows each step. God prepares the table. God anoints. God. God. God.

But then when we get to the end...here’s how Fischer puts verse 6...(emphasis added)

And goodness and kindness will follow me
all the days of my life.1

Quick thing - guess what word kindness is translated from...Remember Psalm 21 a few days ago? Same word.

Hesed - mercylovingkindness

As a result, you could put it this way...and goodness and mercylovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life.

So, God does all this stuff in this Psalm until we get to that last part and it shifts to what is left behind us. I think I’ve generally read this verse as God leaving goodness and hesed behind us. But what if it was not about what God leaves but instead what we leave in response to what God has done? Is it what is left behind in our wake, like a boat or a duck on the water. What do we leave behind?

I have always read this Psalm as the humans in it are basically passive - like sheep being guided along by the shepherd. Honestly (and sorry for the bluntness here), sheep generally don’t leave behind goodness and hesed (IYKYK). But is this Psalm giving us a challenge here...that if God does all these things for us - shepherding, guiding, protecting, providing, being with us, preparing, anointing...is this Psalm saying that the wake that is left behind our lives should be those same kinds of things?

Honestly, I am not 100% sure whether this is a valid take on this Psalm but it is really baking my noodle (to quote The Oracle in The Matrix) of seeing something in this Psalm that I don’t remember seeing before. And even if it isn’t a “valid” interpretation of how this Psalm is, the message still works...what are we each leaving in the wake of our days and our lives as a whole?

Carrie Newcomer

has a beautiful song (of course, all of her songs are pretty beautiful and amazing) called Bare to the Bone. The song has spoken to me especially in times of grief and loss so I’m may be taking the lyrics a bit out of context here, but the 2nd half of the chorus is this:

Between here and now and forever
is such precious little time
What we do in love and kindness
is all we ever leave behind2

What we do in love and kindness (hesed?) is all we ever leave behind. Maybe what Carrie is singing of here is that, even when we have been taken down to the bone with grief, loss, and pain, that what we still need to remember is leaving love and kindness (hesed) behind us. That’s what I want to leave in the wake of my life.

Side note - In my book, Ordinary Benchmarks, there’s an April photo that reflects on the literal wake of a duck on the water. When writing it, I did a deep dive (pun intended) into the science of boat wakes and it is totally fascinating...Did you know that the pattern of a wake is the same whether it is a duck, a kayak, a canoe, or even a cruise ship? Check it out here:

Writeup

Youtube Video

Today’s photo is a crop of the duck and its wake from that day’s reflection.