Hinds’ Feet on High Places

April 6, 2012

 “For who is God besides the Lord? And who is the Rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great.  You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn” (Psalm 18:31-36, italics mine).   (Also see Habakkuk 3:19)

“‘Hinds’ feet’, a commonly-used phrase that derives from the Bible, and it is used in the Holy Text to describe a person’s ability to overcome a challenge that has been affecting them or worrying them with ease and success…”

“A hind is a female red deer. This kind of deer is able to move easily and rapidly across the rocks and uneven terrain of the mountains and mountainous landscape. It will leap from rocks without losing footing, suggesting that those with hinds’ feet are able to overcome things easily, and elegantly” (niv.scripturetext.com).

I don’t know how many of you have read the book “Hinds’ Feet on High Places”; if you haven’t, you really should. It is an allegory of a young girl name Much-Afraid, who is on a spiritual journey with her loving Shepherd. Much Afraid has heard that at the top of the mountain, “the high places”, people are made perfect; to a girl with a crippled, imperfect and distorted body, nothing sounds better! Though she has many fears, she has always loved and trusted her Shepherd. She knows that he wants to take her to the high places, but many of her fears hold her back. She also knows that when she reaches the high places she will get a new name… and for a person defined by the name “Much Afraid,” she must long for a new, more flattering name! The difficult thing for her is that she lives in the “Valley of Humiliation”, with the “Fearings” family, her cousin Craven Fear, and other relatives such as doubt, worry, and discouragement. They are all the sources of what is holding her down and keeping her from choosing to walk with the Shepherd and travel to the High Places with him.

This book is beautifully written and has so many messages of the Christian faith woven all throughout.  How many of us let our fears, our worries, our doubts, our pasts, regrets, and our humiliations keep us from walking with God and reaching the high places with him? What could hold us back from going to the high places with our almighty Shepherd, being made perfect and receiving a NEW and GLORIOUS name?!

The Thing I LOVE about this book is that it helped me understand a little better the process of walking with the Lord. I see where I want to go, I know what I want to be and who I want to become… but yet the process to get their seems so impossible, difficult, hard, discouraging, confusing, frustrating… and so often I feel like I am headed in the wrong direction! Often I feel like I am trying my hardest to seek and follow the Lord, and yet things are getting harder, or I feel more lost and confused than I did when I started. I often find myself wondering why the ugliness in me continues to be brought out when I feel that my desire is truly to do good for the Lord. I have begun to realize that it is part of the refining process. I am so far from perfect, and the Lord is the ultimate perfect. The closer I get to him, the more it magnifies the fact that I am so completely imperfect and cannot even come close to standing in the presence of such a mighty and wonderfully perfect God. I have such a long way to go, and yet he chooses to walk with me through it all to get me there. This life is about a journey. We will never fully get to our final “high places” and become perfect in this life. It is all in preparation for heaven and what we will receive when we get there. How discouraging it is to know that we will never on this earth, be what we were originally created to be. Yet how great it is to know that this journey we are on right now does matter. We are on our way to the high places with our shepherd, and the final day when we leave this earth will be the day we will receive our new name and will be made perfect!

I journal quite a bit… and I actually came across this journal entry just yesterday. I wrote the entry on March 2, 2010 and I am talking and praying to God. (Side note: Ben is always curiously trying to read my journals and wondering what I’m writing about… so now he, along with the rest of you, can join along for a little taste of my inner thoughts from my “mysterious” journalJ…)

“…It’s a weird process… the fact that when you are growing and changing us it feels like we are so far from where we wish we were. It feels like the exact opposite of where we hope we would be. But I know I am heading in the right direction because you are what I want, you are what I seek and what I desire;  I know that you know my heart, and my desires.   I believe you are leading me in the process of growth and change. It may not be the easiest path but it is how I will learn and grow. And I am ok with going through difficult situations as long as you hold my hand, lead me through and give me strength and joy throughout the journey. It reminds me of the book “Hinds feet on high places”! I feel so much like “Much Afraid” (the main character). I feel like I have all these insecurities and fears… and I am trying to go on this journey following the Lord with my limp and distorted self. I am broken and I am working my hardest to follow the Lord but there are steep hills and valleys; and I am slow! I see myself in a negative way and I don’t believe that I can actually get up these hills. At times I don’t believe in myself or that God is powerful enough to bring me through. And my fears and insecurities are creeping up at every corner waiting to whisper lies into my ear. I may be walking fine and good and then all of the sudden they will jump out and I will return to my fear and my previous way of thinking.

This journey sounds exactly like the one I have been on for quite some time now. Much Afraid will get a little bit of hope as she sees she is getting closer to the mountain… but then gets discouraged when the path she is on is only going farther away from the high places where she is headed. She feels that she will never truly reach that place and doesn’t understand why the Shepherd is leading her down this path that is not leading where he promised. I feel like that. I feel like I am on that path and heading in the wrong direction, away from where I want to be headed and where I feel I should be headed. I wonder whether or not my Shepherd sees this and knows that I am only heading farther away. It seems like he doesn’t care and that he has left me and forgotten that I am on this path. So I begin to think about making my own path and heading back the way of the high places on my own.  I begin to listen to the lies around me and think that maybe I am walking in circles… and that the only way to get out is to take my own path. But that is not true. I am on the right path and it is through this path that I will see beauty. It is through this path that I will grow and become who I am supposed to be. It is through this experience that I will be able to turn this sadness and confusion into something good… something for the glory and praise of God. It is through this that I will encounter the beautiful flower in the middle of the desert; the one that is being watered by little drops of rain… there is life here. I will find beauty in the midst of this. There is beauty here, I will not miss it. With each step I am growing stronger and learning to embrace my sadness and sorrow and receive joy in the midst of it. I am able to see the things that have hurt me and deal with those. God is showing me these things as I walk with him. I will call on him in the midst of my trouble and he will show up, but he does allow me to walk through the dark at times. He knows when I need him and he hears me when I call out to him; sometimes I need to learn things on my own and allow the growth in myself in order to change” (March 2, 2010).

“If you make the Most High your dwelling-- even the LORD, who is my refuge--  then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.  For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. "Because he loves me," says the LORD, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him” Psalm 91:9-15, emphasis mine).