The Significance of The Hills and Valleys

“It’s too tall. The path looks too difficult to climb. How will I ever reach the top? This is going to be way too hard.” All this runs through your head and some even escapes your mouth as you look up at the highest mountain you’ve ever seen. Your guide is standing a little ways ahead of you waiting for you to catch up. You’re scared. You wonder if you’re going to make it through this without too many bumps and bruises. As you force one foot at a time to move forward your anxiety increases.

What you don’t notice, until you reach the top, is the beautiful, blue sky above scattered with a few fluffy, white clouds. To the left of the mountain, in a little valley, lies a sparkling lake surrounded by large pine trees. You feel the chilly air against your face as the sun warms you from above.

As you walk down, you realize you’ve been blind to the lessons God is trying to teach you. You notice the tree you saw right before a tight bend in the path. You remember being so stressed about loosing sight of your guide even though you could still hear his strong voice through the wind. A little farther and you see a steep cliff you almost slipped down. It hurts to remember that you didn’t even thank your guide after he warned you to be careful. Towards the end of the hike, you notice a large stone on the side of the path. You realize it’s the same one you tripped over on your way up. A few steps down you see a couple of people looking out at the lake. They catch you looking at them and smile. You smile back when you realize they were the ones who moved the stone.

1. No matter how loud the winds of the world or the whispers of the Enemy may be, our Heavenly Father is only one prayer away. He might feel far away, but all we have to do is call out to Him and He will meet us right where we are because His love His for us is so great.

2. We can easily feel lonely and alone, especially in the hard times. But there are people in our lives who love us and care for us and will be there when life gets difficult. If it’s hard to see who those people are, we can ask God to show us who they are or bring people into our lives we can trust and count on.

   
   

   We do need to remember that humans are humans and we all will let each other down. Only God will never leave us. But He does put people in our lives to be a reminder of how great His love for His children is.

   
   

3. Without the valleys (the difficult times in our walk) our faith won’t have a chance to be strengthened as our lives seem to be falling apart. The valleys shape our character and make us, as well as our faith in Jesus, stronger. And when we are in those valleys, it can be easy to forget what His presence feels like. Because sometimes, He takes the feeling of His presence away, as He teaches us to follow and trust His leading.

   
   

4. Without the mountaintop moments (times of peace or rest, when life might be a little easier) we can forget how faithful our God is. Hebrews 13:5b promises that God will never leave us. But sometimes, in the midst of the crazy, we can forget that promise. When God blesses us with a mountaintop moment, we can look back and see specific times where He has been faithful to us. And trust, that as we walk into challenging times, He will still be right there beside us.

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth." - Psalm 121 :1-2

To end this post, I do want to say that we don't always have to go through difficult times to receive good things from God. For example God's grace is a gift. We did nothing to deserve the salvation Jesus freely gave to us. He died and rose for us because He loves us.

Sometimes, God will just bless us because He loves us. Other times, He will use the difficult times in our lives to stretch us and grow us and then, through our obedience, He will bless us with joy and peace and many other things too. :)

I also want to say that beautiful meadows are often in the midst of valleys. Even in the worst of times there are still things the Lord blesses us with that we can be thankful and praise Him for. It's not always easy. But gratitude can bring a different perspective. And when our eyes are on Jesus, and not the difficult path ahead, the hard things won't feel as hard because we know we serve a powerful, loving Father.