As I delve into the pages of Hannah Hurnard’s Hind’s Feet on High Places, my restless and longing spirit so adamantly identifies with Much-Afraid.
I am much afraid. Afraid of where God wants to take me, how deep He wants to take me into Himself. I am just a clunky little human like Much-Afraid; unsure of her footing and paralyzed by the seemingly daunting future awaiting me. I am crooked inside and out- surely I cannot claim the promises He has made to me of giving me a hope and a future. Those promises must have been for someone unblemished and pure, the person I could have been if I were stronger, more capable, kinder, better…etc. In my current state I am weak and trembling.
I am unworthy.
Yet page by page, and day by day in my own life, I am realizing that just as it is not up to Much-Afraid to get to the High Places on her own, it is not up to me or my adequecies to carve out the path of my own journey. As I come up against wall after wall in my own planning and determined will to find the right path, He keeps quietly asking me this question:
“Do you trust Me?”
He whispers it over and over again, inviting me to completely abandon myself to His way for me.
But won’t that mean I have to give up everything? Everything I want, everything I have, everything I am? I ask Him in return. And I already know the answer, just as Much-Afraid can’t help but continue to obey and follow Him in the face of her own worst nightmares.
It’s too late. I am already His, and there is no going back to easier paths:
There is no question of your turning back, Much-Afraid. No one, not even your own shrinking heart, can pluck you out of my hand. Don’t you remember what I told you before? ‘This play is not unto death but for the glory of God.’
God has brought me to a standstill to show me that the way forward is not up, but down. To go lower. To go deeper. To humble myself even more before Him. And these ways are not natural; I cannot even bring myself to the precipice of them, but just as Much-Afraid allows her companions to be Sorrow and Suffering, so must I humbly accept the companions God gives me along the way- the friends and family who surround me and remind me of His love and the steep and narrow path I must follow to develop my hinds’ feet. And too, like Much-Afraid, my enemies Pride, Self-Pity, and Bitterness lurk in the shadows, ready to devour me at every corner when my guard is lowered and I believe for a second that there is another way. But He is faithful to keep me safe and protected, even when I am at my weakest and feel that I can’t go on anymore.
Our lives are entirely shaped around our response to His question. And the more we say yes, and surrender fully and completely to Him, the more He will ask of us. The more dangerous the way will become, and the more necessary it will be to trust Him further still. This is the pruning process- the only way we can develop our hinds’ feet. But as the stakes get higher, so do the rewards of following Him wholeheartedly: the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, and self-control. We become more like Him and less like our old selves; renewed inwardly while outwardly we are wasting away (2 Corinthians 4:16).
I cling to His promises in the dark. He’s given me a taste of His Kingdom, The High Places, and with that vision I go forth into the unknown.
rhythms of grace 