Grazing on God (Part 1)

He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters.
—Psalm 23:2

Left to ourselves we would have nothing more than restlessness, driven by the realization that there is something more to know and love. But God will not leave us to ourselves. He makes us lie down in green pastures. He leads us by quiet waters.

The verbs suggest gentle persuasion—a shepherd patiently, persistently encouraging his sheep to the place where their hungers and thirsts will be assuaged.

In David’s day “green pastures” were oases, verdant places in the desert toward which shepherds led their thirsty flocks. Left to themselves sheep would wander off into the wilderness and die. Experienced shepherds knew the terrain and urged their flocks toward familiar grasslands and streams where they could forage and feed, lie down and rest.

The picture here is not of sheep grazing and drinking, but at rest, lying down—“stretched out” to use David’s word. The verb leads suggests a slow and leisurely pace. The scene is one of tranquillity, satisfaction, and rest.

The common practice of shepherds was to graze their flocks in rough pasture early in the morning, leading them to better grasses as the morning progressed, and then coming to a cool and shaded oasis for noontime rest.

The image of placid waters emphasizes the concept of rest—the condition of having all our passions satisfied. Augustine cried out, “What will make me take my rest in You . . . so I can forget my restlessness and take hold of You, the one good thing in my life?”

The compulsion begins with God. God makes the first move; He takes the initiative—calling us, leading us to a place of rest.

It’s not that we’re seeking God; He is seeking us. “There is a property in God of thirst and longing,” said Dame Julian of Norwich. “He hath longing to have us.”

God’s cry to wayward Adam and Eve, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9), suggests the loneliness He feels when separated from those He loves. G. K. Chesterton suggested that the whole Bible is about the “loneliness of God.” I like the thought that in some inexplicable way God misses me; that He can’t bear to be separated from me; that I’m always on His mind; that He patiently, insistently calls me, seeks me, not for my own sake alone, but for His. He cries, “Where are you?”

Deep within us is a place for God. We were made for God, and without His love we ache in loneliness and emptiness. He calls from deep space to our depths: “deep calls to deep” (Psalm 42:7).

David put it this way,

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!”
Your face, Lord, I will seek (Psalm 27:8).

God spoke to the depths of David’s heart, uttering His heart’s desire: “Seek My face.” And David responded with alacrity, “I will seek Your face, Lord.”

And so it is: God calls us—seeking us to seek Him—and our hearts resonate with longing for Him.

That understanding has radically changed the way I look at my relationship to God: It is now neither duty nor discipline—a regimen I impose on myself like a hundred sit-ups and fifty push-ups each day—but a response, an answer, to One who has been calling me all my life.

But what are those green pastures and quiet waters to which He leads us? And where are they? What is the reality behind these metaphors?

The real thing is God Himself. He is our “true pasture” (Jeremiah 50:7) and our pool of quiet water. He is our true nourishment, our living water. If we do not take Him in, we will starve.

There is a hunger in the human heart that nothing but God can satisfy. There is a thirst that no one but He can quench. “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).

Taken from Seeing God, ©2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566 Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.