DAD'S RAMBLINGS -- THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS – THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." (Psalm 23:3)

"Now at the end of the Valley of Humiliation, there was another valley, the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And since there was no other way to the Celestial City, Christian was obliged to go through it. Now this valley was a very solitary place, and as the prophet Jeremiah described it, 'a wilderness, a land of desert, and of pits, a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a land that no man [but as a Christian] passed through, and where no one lived.'"

Quite often, we think of the Valley of the Shadow of Death as the death experience where go through the pangs of leaving this world. Bunyan had a different view. He saw it in terms of the times in the Christian walk where it seems dry and barren, where no there is no rejoicing, where it seems one walks alone without anyone to walk alongside to encourage. It is death in the sense that it seems that one is separated from God. We call it depression.

I've been through this valley more than once. Perhaps the worst time was in 1971-72. I thought God was leading us to vocational missionary service to Hispanics. When that did not happen, I walked through a very "desert" time when it seemed that God was absent, even though I sought Him with many tears. Another time was an extended period in the 1990s when it seemed that God was very far away, and my spiritual life was as dry as a bone that Skeeter had picked clean. It was again a time when what I had thought that what God was leading us to do collapsed in ashes. I went through the motions, but it was indeed a dark and dry time. The only thing that kept me going was my faith, my love for Jesus, and the promise that He would be with me to the end.

It wasn't until Christian came out of the valley and looked back that He could see that God had been faithful even during the dark times – that He was there. Christian growth is a funny thing, but it seems that the deepening of faith comes through the dry times when "the just shall live by their faith" (Habakkuk 2:4; Galatians 3:11, et al). God is present, even in the dark and dry times.

Love, Dad