June 20
THE LORD OUR COMPANION
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they
comfort me" Ps. 23:4
Sweet are these words in describing a deathbed assurance. How many
have repeated them in their last hours with intense delight!
But the verse is equally applicable to agonies of spirit in the
midst of life. Some of us, like Paul, die daily through a tendency to
gloom of soul. Bunyan puts the Valley of the Shadow of Death far
earlier in the pilgrimage than the river which rolls at the foot of
the celestial hills. We have some of us traversed the dark and
dreadful defile of "the shadow of death" several times, and we can
bear witness that the Lord alone enabled us to bear up amid its wild
thought, its mysterious horrors, its terrible depressions. The Lord
has sustained us, and kept us above all real fear of evil, even when
our spirit has been overwhelmed. We have been pressed and oppressed,
but yet we have lived, for we have felt the presence of the Great
Shepherd, and have been confident that His crook would prevent the foe
from giving us any deadly wound.
Should the present time be one darkened by the raven wings of a
great sorrow, let us glorify God by a peaceful trust in Him.