This year my mother-in-law gave us a lovely wall calendar featuring the 23rd Psalm. Each month features one sentence of the Psalm plus an illustration, making it a perfectly-paced aid for the kids to memorize the Psalm over the course of the year. As we started memorizing the first sentence, "the Lord is my shepherd," the kids mastered it quickly, but I realized it meant nothing to them having met neither sheep nor shepherd in their little city-kid lives.
We hit the library and after rejecting a lot of text-heavy, black-and-white illustrated, published-in-1963 sort of books, we found Sheep by Peter Murray.
It's not exactly what I was hoping for, but was the best we could do. It has large, bright photographs of a variety of sheep breeds, lots of sheep facts, and it helped create some background knowledge for the kids to understand a bit more of what it means to be a shepherd.
(Now really, don't you think he could have found a more photogenic sheep for the cover? Some one primped and fluffed and snowy white instead of this frumpy girl with bits of straw clinging to her wool and nose? Eh, well, realism I suppose . . .)
I've discovered that an acquaintance raises sheep, so I'm hoping to arrange a field trip for the kids now that it's spring to build even better context for understanding the beautiful metaphor of this Psalm.
Psalm 23
A psalm of David.
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
4 Even 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.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.
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