“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me” (Psalm 23:4).
Schoolboys decided to have fun by swapping street signs in the town where they lived. Making sure that the police were nowhere to be seen, they removed the sign leading into the local cemetery which read “DEAD-END STREET” and replaced it with one which read “NOT A THROUGH STREET.” I doubt that the boys gave much thought to the theological statement that changing those signs made, but the message was totally valid.
Death is not a dead-end, but merely not a through street. Perhaps it is the strangeness and the finality of the whole passage, though, that makes it so frightening. Apart from Jesus Christ, no one has walked through that narrow valley, the valley of the shadow of death, and returned to tell us about it.
Long ago David spoke of that passage, saying, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4).
That verse has brought more comfort to dying men and women than perhaps any other verse in the Bible, and rightly so. No one is immune from passing through this valley at the end of life’s journey. Henry W. Longfellow wrote, “There is no flock, however watched and tended, but one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howso’er defended, but has one vacant chair!”
Historians say that there was an actual valley about four-and-a-half miles in length located between Bethlehem, where David grew up and shepherded his father’s sheep, and Jericho, where with a warmer climate, greener pastures were found in the winters.
The valley of the shadow of death was the saddle through which the shepherd had to take his sheep. It was so named because flash floods could come quickly, and the floodwaters could catch the shepherd with his flocks, and there was no escape. David, though, had no fear of that valley because he was convinced the Lord was with him.
Charles Pfeiffer, one of the last century’s foremost Bible scholars, did not believe that it was the fear of death that troubled David as much as the fear of dying. I think he is right. Today we have done much to soften the impact of that dark valley. We have changed the language, using the term “casket” in place of “coffin.” We refer to a “funeral home” instead of a “mortuary,” and speak of the “gardens” instead of calling it “the cemetery” or “graveyard.”
It is little wonder that the fear of death is man’s greatest fear. Removing the black and softening the paleness of death with rosy lights and stained-glass windows may take some of the starkness from the landscape of that narrow valley, yet the fear of death can be removed only by one thing: knowing that the Shepherd, who Himself conquered death, walks through the valley with you. Now, are we to presume that all people everywhere should have the confidence that David had? Or do only a handful of people have that confidence? Bringing it home, ask, “Can I have that confidence?” Frankly, not all people everywhere have that confidence, but they can. The Shepherd who walked with David can walk with you. Interested in knowing how this great promise can have your name on it? Then make the Lord your Shepherd. To His own He also said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Knowing that cuts man’s greatest fear down to its proper dimensions, because the Good Shepherd never leaves His sheep. When you walk through that valley, you can be sure, as His child, He will walk with you. He’s been there. He knows the way out.
Resource reading: Psalm 23.
