Hind's Feet on High Places
This morning the Lord brought to mind an excerpt from the book Hind's Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. How timely this is:
"Much-Afriad,' said the Shepherd again, "tell me, what is the matter. Why were you so fearful?"
"It is the way you have chosen for me to go," she whispered. "It looks so dreadful, Shepherd, so impossible. I turn giddy and faint whenever I look at it. The roes and hinds can go there. but they are not limping, crippled or cowardly like me."
"But, Much-Afriad, what did I promise you in the Valley of Humiliation?" asked the Shepherd with a smile.
Much-Afraid looked startled, and the blood rushed into her cheeks and ebbed again, leaving them as white as before. "You said," she began and broke off and then began again. "O Shepherd, you said you would make my feet like hinds' feet and set me upon mine High Places."
"Well," he answered cheerily, "the only way to develop hinds' feet is to go by the paths which the hinds use --like this one."
Much-Afraid trembled and looked at him shamefacedly. "I don't think --I want-- hinds' feet, if it means I have to go on a path like that," she said slowly and painfully.
The Shepherd was a very surprising person. Instead of looking either disappointed or disapproving, he actually laughed again. "Oh, yes you do," he said cheerfully. "I know you better than you know yourself, Much-Afriad. You want it very much indeed, and I promise you these hinds' feet. Indeed, I have brought you on purpose to this back side of the desert, where the mountains are particularly steep and where there are no paths but the tracks of the deer and of the mountain goats for you to follow, that the promise may be fulfilled. What did I say to you the last time that we met?"
"You said, 'Now shalt thou see what I will do,'" she answered, and then, looking at him reproachfully, added, "But I never dreamed you would do anything like this! Lead me to an impassable precipice up which nothing can go but deer and goats, when I'm no more like a deer or a goat than is a jellyfish. It's too--it's too--" She fumbled for words, and then burst out laughing. "Why, it's too preposterously absurd! It's crazy! Whatever will you do next?"
The Shepherd laughed too. "I love doing preposterous things," he replied. "Wy, I don't know anything more exhilarating and delightful than turning weakness into strength, and fear into faith, and that which has been marred into perfection. If there is one thing more than another which I should enjoy doing at this moment it is turning a jellyfish into a mountain goat. That is my special work," he added with the light of a great joy in his face. "Transforming things--to take Much-Afraid, for instance, and to transform her into--" He broke off and then went on laughingly. "Well, we shall see later on what she finds herself transformed into."