“I can as fully prove that thou art my shepherd by thy keeping me in the grassy field, as by thy fetching me back when I have wandered; I know thou art as much my shepherd when thou hast supplied my wants day by day as if thou hadst suffered me to go into poverty and given me bitterness; I know thou art as much my shepherd when granting me a continual stream of mercy, as if that stream had stopped for a moment and then began again. Persons say if they have had an accident, and been nearly killed, or have narrowly escaped, “What a providence!” Why, it is as much a providence when you have no accident all. A good man once went to a place to meet his son. Both his son and himself had ridden from some distance. When the son arrived he exclaimed, “O! Father, I had such a providence on the road.” “Why, what was that?” “My horse stumbled six times, and I was not thrown down and killed.” “Dear me!” said his father, “but I have had a providence too.” “And what was that?” “Why, my horse never stumbled at all, and that is just as much a providence as if the horse had stumbled six times, and I had not been thrown down.” Well, you know it is a great providence when you have lost your property, and God provides for you; but it is quite as much a providence when you have no loss at all, and when you are still able to live above the depths of penury and so God provides for you. I say this to some of you whom God has blessed from your earliest youth, and continually provided for; you, too, can say, “The Lord is my shepherd;” you can see it stamped on your mercies; though they come daily, they are given you of God; and you will say, by humble faith, the word “my” as loud as any one of them. “The Lord is my shepherd.” Do not get despising the little ones because they have not had so many trials as you have. You great standard men, do not get cutting the children of God in pieces because they have not been in such fights as you have. The master leads the sheep where he pleases, and be sure he will lead them rightly; and as long as they can say the word “my,” do not trouble yourselves where they learned it–if they can say from their hearts, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”” 1
1 – C. H. Spurgeon, “The Good Shepherd,” in Spurgeon’s Sermons, Vol. 4 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2016).
Nathan's Bookshelf 