There is a timeless truth that the
hardest of walks can end up as the most transformative:
“Mountaintops
are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys.”
~Billy Graham
We hate growing because it
involves growing pains; certain humiliations and depths of suffering where God
gets through to us in the magnanimity of holy truth.
For a time we kick against the
pricks in our pride. We cannot digest the noxious flavours of an era now supposedly
bygone; we thought we were past this; we thought we had dealt with all of this,
perhaps. Or, maybe, there is a reticence due to the amount of pain involved.
Grief takes us by storm. It allows only numbness with sprinklings for anger,
denial, bargaining. It can be so disabling.
But going against the grain of the
incoming themes of life only takes us so far, and in the fatiguing frustration
we stop resisting. Then we start learning: God may have a purpose in this,
after all.
When The Openness Of Perspective Comes
Caught in this place, always
beyond our will—yet, so often as we see later, it was God’s will that good was
made of this evil—we begin to journey with it. The valley becomes of value.
The darkest of valleys can be
negotiated only through the light of God. We learn this early on. And this is
of encouragement to us. When the openness of perspective comes in the darkest
of places, we understand our invincibility with God.
Suddenly it comes to our attention
that life with God is unbeatable. Any challenge could come and our strength is
drawn more and more so in weakness.
But it took openness to get us
here. We had to get past our pride, past thought for injustice, and past
feelings for our own pathetic weakness. At last we understand that weakness is
the key.
Weakness opens the door to the
openness of perspective; the door to the value of the valley is unlocked. And
inside that valley awaits a new, more mature version of us; one that
appreciates life a whole lot more.
The Divinity Of Learning
The greatest thing we ever learn
in the valley of despair—that dark place where we find out what we are without
God—is learning is the solution to life. With the mind opened, and a heart
prepared for reception, God communicates.
God communicates through prayer in
an unspoken language. What he speaks is enshrined in the product of goodness by
the determinant of grace.
***
The darkest valleys have the
lushest flora for spiritual nourishment and the juiciest streams for spiritual
lubrication. At these places we are found open, and God communicates to a
receptive vessel, transforming them.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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