Your Shepherd and Mine
Cathedral Newsletter – 14 November 2025
Friends in Christ, on annual leave I finished a most spiritually refreshing book: The Lord of Psalm 23: Jesus our Shepherd, Companion, and Host by David Gibson. (You can order it online here.)
It came at just the right time, as Serena and many others experience the death of a loved one. I am sure the heart of every person in the Cathedral community aches for Serena, our Chinese Minister, in the loss, so quickly after diagnosis, of her dear husband, Colin, last Saturday. There are details of Colin’s funeral below.
But perhaps you or a loved one are also facing a devastating diagnosis or some other deep grief or difficult and dark struggle yourself. David Gibson writes:
I tell the Trinity Church family often that the best thing I can ever give them from the pulpit is a clearer sight of God himself and that the greatest thing they can ever have in life is more of God himself. We always want practical religion – effective habits, daily disciplines, lifestyle fixes – and these can all be wonderful if they are full of gospel grace, but the fountain from which they flow is God himself. Whoever you are, and whatever you are experiencing today as you read these lines, there is nothing better to know in all the world than that the shepherd you belong to is the Lord of the burning bush who revealed his name to Moses. [p15]
Gibson goes on to demonstrate that Jesus explicitly claims to be the Good Shepherd in John's Gospel, chapter 10: He says, "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and he will go in and out and find pasture" (John 10:9, my emphasis). Gibson comments…
The green pastures of rest that Psalm 23 depicts are the pastures of rest that humanity has been longing for ever since our exile from Eden; they are a restoration to us of what has been lost through our sin and rebellion, and they return to us only as we place ourselves within the care of Jesus our shepherd. [pp36-37]
Thinking on vv2-3 of Psalm 23, Gibson writes:
There is no way to be at rest in this world, or to be at rest with the Lord in the world to come, without being made new by the words he speaks and the righteousness he gives as we give ourselves to him. [p48]
Gibson points out that the exact midpoint of the Psalm are these words in v4: “for you are with me”. He says it’s the “centrepiece of complete safety”. Either side, there are dark valleys and enemies. But as he says, “…while this verse is sung along a particular road all sheep must take, it is a path they never walk alone” [p57].
With trust in Jesus as Shepherd, you are never alone.
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Friends, here are the details of the funeral of Colin Tse, Serena Cheung’s husband, who is now “safe in the arms of Jesus” his Lord. All who love and respect Colin and Serena are welcome.
Date: Thursday 20th November 2025
Time: 10:00am (viewing from 9:30am)
Place: St Andrew’s Cathedral
On-site forecourt parking will NOT be available except for family. Best access via Train or Light Rail to Town Hall Station or by Metro to Gadigal Station. Otherwise the closest available car park is Wilson’s - St Andrew’s House car park at 464 Kent Street, with lifts directly to the ground floor of Sydney Square and Cathedral entrances. Note: we cannot arrange discounted parkingduring week-day time. Cinema Centre Car Park, with dual entrances at 521 Kent Street and 306 Sussex Street is another large car park nearby. Reasonably priced early bird parking before 10am may be available.
Cathedral people, you can express your love and respect for Colin and Serena in these ways.
1. A donation towards flowers for the funeral service.
Any excess from these funds not required for the flowers will be donated to the Cancer Council in honour of Colin.
Please put your donation this Sunday in a clearly marked envelope named ‘Colin’ on the front and place in the offertory bags or box (or less preferably, give to a staff member for securing).
2. Contribute a plate of sweet or savoury finger food for the morning tea straight after the funeral. Please bring it, preferably on a disposable plate, properly covered (and it can help is it is marked as dairy free or gluten free or vegetarian - as many as apply).
3. Volunteer to help serve tea and coffee and to offer finger food plates around. Please email our office if you would like to help that way.
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There is so much more that I could share from Gibson’s book that uses Psalm 23 to encourage and exhort us. But let me finish today with this extended quote:
…the point … is to go slowly enough through the psalm that we absorb the assurance and comfort of knowing it is not possible for the sheep to have an encounter with either death or its advance shadow that is outside God's decree and his loving, fatherly care. My prayer for you as you read these lines is that you come to know the valley you are in to be God's valley and your good shepherd to be the one who has led you there. At this very moment, you might feel more lost than ever, in deepest darkness like a shroud, but your Lord Jesus is not standing there beside you lost or scratching his head wondering what to do. It may not yet be part of your theological framework that all things, including each valley, come from God's fatherly hand. But it needs to be. For if God is not in charge of the valley, how do you know he can get you through it?
Warmly in Christ,
Sandy Grant
Dean of Sydney