Walking Through The Valley
One of my best memories as a teenager is the annual spring vacation trip my friends and I would plan together. It was usually close by and involved camping and plenty of food. Of course, the planning was usually much more fun than the trip! It didn’t have the red bug bites or the hard beds. I remember one particular time we hiked about fifteen miles through the Talladega National Forrest to our farm located across a huge mountain ridge. The plan was to get to the top of the largest ridge and walk down it for about 10 miles before dropping off on other side. The only problem is that we had to cross a couple of pretty steep ridges to get to the right one. I know this one great truth about hiking mountains: The higher the mountain ridges, the deeper the valley between them. I remember finally getting the one we wanted after crossing some very deep valleys and once there, we worked hard to stay on that ridge and avoid those “hollows” at all cost.
Avoiding the valleys! Let me say right now if you are someone who lives on the mountain tops all the time, you might just skip this devotional. Mountaintops are great, and I would love to just stay there. I understand why the disciples wanted to stay on the mountain with Jesus…you know, just kind of hang out with Him, laugh a lot and have a good time. I’d love to stay there too, but I haven’t figured out the secret yet. And unfortunately, often the greatest mountaintops in life are divided by the deepest valleys. Loneliness invades our life…uninvited. Sometimes it seems the more we love, the more we hurt; and if we are honest with ourselves, we are tempted to build walls of protection so the pain won’t be so great. Sometimes we pray, but the hurt just keeps coming. We try, but we fail…we try again, but we lose…we climb, but soon we fall. The valley gets deep and we cry out to a world too busy to listen. Satan whispers in our ear, “Quit trying…there is no use.” And sometimes we listen and the world wins.
Certainly Paul had valleys…valleys much deeper than I could ever encounter. Snake bitten…stoned…beaten…imprisoned…diseased—I don’t pretend to be able to relate to such obstacles and yet my valleys seem to me to be just as deep. And yet faced with these obstacles, Paul says this, “When I am weakest, He becomes greatest.” It is those moments in our lives when we are the lowest than we will turn to God…He is all we have, and we must depend on Him…and He comes. He comes to us through Christ, and in our deepest valley…in our loneliest moment…in our darkest hour, He comes and we are not alone. Though the world forsake us, Christ is with us.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou are with me.” Thou art with me! That’s the promise.
Thank God for the mountaintops. May your life be filled with them and may we never stop trying to reach them…it is there we find “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” But when the valleys come…and they will come…we never walk alone…Christ walks with us, and that makes all the difference in our lives.Thanks be to God.