The Way He Has Chosen

I love the quiet comfort of my house early in the morning before everyone else wakes up. The luxury of having unhurried and uninterrupted moments with God is like a gift box in your lap wrapped in really expensive paper that is way outside your budget with the kind of bow that you could never have tied yourself and so you just want to sit and hold it a while and not rush through the process of getting to what is inside.

In recent weeks I felt the Lord pulling me back to the classic book, Hinds' Feet on High Places, which I have read at least eight times over the past eighteen years but which never fails to speak something of great value to my heart. I have been working through it slowly during my devotional time, savoring it like an expensive meal in a fine restaurant. The other day I read this passage: "Will you bear this too, Much-Afraid? Will you suffer yourself to lose or to be deprived of all you have gained on this journey to the High Places? Will you go down this path into the Valley of Loss, just because it is the way I have chosen for you? Will you still trust and still love Me?"

What is my answer to that question? There are turns in the path with Him where He brings you to a place that overlooks the Valley of Loss and you must consider if you really are willing to follow Him into something that appears crazy and that places all that you have gained so far onto the altar of sacrifice. Many in the audience of your life might even judge you and ridicule you for taking such a direction and, as for applause...well, there will be none of that. Will I allow Him to break the reverie of my daily living to pose such a question to me? Will you?