The Valley of the Shadow

This message is not part of our Advent series, but one I delivered at the memorial service for Mel, Patti and Rachel Rissler. It is based on Psalm 23.

I built the sermon around a new insight I had to verse 4; "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." Maybe it is because I usually am working with this psalm during a time of death, but I always tended to think of the valley of the shadow as referring to the journey one makes from this life to the next. In other words it is a valley defined by death. Of course, that is true, this valley does refer to that.

My new thought--no doubt not a very original one, but giving me some deeper meaning to this verse--I think it also applies to any one of us who have the "shadow of death" cast across our lives because we have been led into a valley of death by the loss of someone we have known, or someone close to us has lost someone they have loved.

No doubt the very tragic nature of the death of the Risslers and the wide spread publicity it has brought to our community, served to open my eyes to this angle on the verse.

The promise of the Psalm is that whenever we experience the pain of death, God is with us to lead us through.

I know in a much larger sense, the words "Valley of the Shadow" can apply to any difficult experience we face in life. The Hebrew word translated "Valley of the Shadow" is a favorite of Job, being used in each of these verses his his book: 3:5; 10:21-22; 12:22; 16:16; 24:17 (twice); 28:3; 34:22; 38:17. It also occurs occasionally in other Psalms: 44:19; 107:10,14; and in Jer 2:6; 13:16; Isa 9:2; and Amos 5:8. Best to read these verses in the KJV or otherwise the word may be translated differently.

In many of those verses the word refers to a wide range of negative life experiences and not specifically death. So there is good reason for reading Psalm 23:4 as referring not just to experiences of death, but to other life situations which are difficult. Nevertheless, the verse does apply to valleys defined by death.

For me, I gained new insight into this promise as I thought about how the shadow of death is cast across our lives whenever we lose a loved one, and tried in this message to work out some encouragement from that perspective.

You can read my message here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tf70e1EnWBy1znDKmHmSzwNfj_hMhQ4IylyjGM3iRVk/edit?hl=en_US