Hind's Feet on High Places

 

"He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;

he causes me to stand on the heights."

 --Psalm 18:33

I love these rock formations in central Wisconsin.  They seem to rise up out of nowhere, oddly placed amidst the rolling farmland that surrounds the main highway through Wisconsin.  They've become a sort of landmark for me, traveling this road so often through the years.  The first time I saw them I was a young Bride with my Husband going home to visit our parents. Now we are the parents driving these same roads to visit our adult children.  After I was first given my copy of the book, "Hind's Feet on High Places," by Hannah Hurnard, these towers of rocky cliffs came to represent for me a picture of what the main character may have faced in her journey to the High Places. 

Perhaps you know the story?  Written decades ago, it remains a most popular allegory of the journey of "Much Afraid," the young girl in the service of the Great Shepherd. She has a disfigured face and a lame, painful gait, but longs to escape the fearful life she has led, and travel to the beautiful High Places of her Great Shepherd.  When she expresses her longing to Him, He tells her that He's been waiting to hear her say that, and laughs at the sheer joy of the beautiful transformation that He has planned for her.

However, before she can reach the High Places, she will encounter many trials along the way. And in this Current Season of life, with days that include my own painful gait, I have sensed that it was time for a revisit to the Land of Much Afraid.  Don't you love those kind of books, the ones that speak something new each time you read them?

The tears have been ready at the surface, as I've walked with Much Afraid this week.  Each new chapter sparks a new comparison with my own journey.  But it was in the heat of the desert that my heart found a song today.  For in a "lonely corner behind a wall, she came upon a little golden-yellow flower growing all alone."  Much Afraid discovers that a water pipe with one tiny hole had allowed just enough water drops to fall onto a seed that had fallen there, and caused it to grow. When she asked the flower her name, this was the answer she heard:

"Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy."

 

I have read this story so many times, and I have studied and journaled along with it even.  So I was not surprised when this little flower spoke to Much Afraid.  But our hearts do not have to be surprised to be awakened.  Sometimes the whisper has been echoing in our hearts while our eyes remain closed.  Only a flutter in response will stir our Great Shepherd to bring the daylight and the water to those seeds he planted so long ago.  

I began this blog almost 5 months ago, with the first post speaking to what my heart needed:  Acceptance, of where my journey was taking me. And still today, my Shepherd is watering that seed, and causing it to grow.  He is the one who planted the seed, the seed of HIS own likeness. I may have inherited the genetic code to develop some of those same illnesses that my Mom or my Dad also bore.  But in the same way that they are now beautifully transformed into HIS perfect likeness as they take JOY with Him in Heaven, I too am being transformed into the image that my Shepherd has planned for me.  


The trials and the desert heat may seem at first glance to be consuming all hope of life away from me.  But just as that little flower proved to Much Afraid, the Shepherd's Life cannot be stopped.  For those of us following the Shepherd to His High Places there will be an awakening and a transformation.  We are being transformed!  And because of HIS great Love, we can say,

"Behold us!  We are Acceptance with Joy!"

 

 

Linking this week with some beautiful bloggers over at #TellHisStory