The LORD is my Shepherd...

A psalm of David

I think we have all known of people who have seemed to have led charmed lives when it came to getting through difficult times. Sometimes we look at such people and wonder how they even survived. My Dad was such a man.

He grew up in the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression. When he was about five, things got so bad for his family in Texas that his father could no longer make a living. So, they loaded up a borrowed car with four or five kids and his mother pregnant with another. It was like a scene from The Grapes of Wrath, only it was no story. At my Dad's funeral, my Uncle Bill told how it was so cold on part of their trip that my Granny would hold a candle and run it along the inside of the windshield just so they could see. 

They would sleep in a tent they brought, and the conditions were so difficult that the sweet woman who would become my Granny lost the baby. By the time they got to California, the only work my grandfather could get was as a guard for the fruit pickers during the times of fighting between the strikers and the strike breakers. They would later tell of just how dangerous it was with my grandfather being involved in gun battles, and one instance where my Granny literally stood guard with a butcher knife when they thought trouble was coming to their tent and my grandfather was not able to be there. 

A few years later, Dad would find himself serving on a ship during the Korean War. One of their missions involved the detonation of one of the hydrogen bombs at the Bikini Atolls. He said that this particular blast was so much more powerful than the Navy had anticipated that rust rained down on them from the force of the explosion. Dad said his job was among the most important. After the test, they had a bit of trouble getting a timely supply ship into the area, so they had to pilfer their coffee from one of the now deserted Islands. He ran the Geiger counter to determine when the coffee was no longer too "hot" from the radiation to be used for human consumption. I can remember seeing a letter from the War Department, or some such other agency, inviting him to come get a physical to see if he was suffering any effects from the radiation from their proximity to the explosion.

A few years later, still, found him at a mortgage banker's school in Los Angeles in August of 1965. He and some other would-be mortgage bankers were "stretching their legs" in a section of Watts that was recently in the news. A black gentleman spotted them and asked them what they were doing, and they told him they were just out for a walk, looking at the sights. This man took pity on them and told them they needed to get out of there, and quick, because it was about to become a bit dangerous. A few hours later (and a few miles away) Dad and some of his associates watched the smoke rising from the fires started by those participating in what was to become known as the Watts' Riots.

I've wondered more than a few times how Dad even survived. My only conclusion is that God was watching over him - the Lord really was his Shepherd. And there have been times in my own life that I have looked back and wondered how I got through them, relatively unscathed. I look at my mom's medical problems, having a childhood asthma so severe that the doctor told my grandmother that she might not make it to adulthood, and I realize that in many ways I was fortunate to have even been born. 

I suppose if we all looked at our lives that we would all see many such instances where we might not have made it through difficult times, or even been born in the first place. Yet, we still survived and we must therefore conclude that God does indeed watch over each one of our lives, and that He does indeed have plans and expectations for us all. Add that to the obvious fact that He loves each one of us and we will come to this conclusion: The Lord is the Shepherd for everyone of us, and we ought to recognize this fact with appreciation and devotion.

And, since we have all have indeed survived, maybe we should think a little more often of just how much He does love us, and just how much we owe Him.