Wednesday Quote: Hinds’ Feet on High Places

So, if you’ve known me long at all, we’ve talked about Hinds’ Feet on High Places. It’s my favorite book, and Hannah Hurnard is like a friend to me – I hope I get to meet her in heaven and say thank you for the gift of her sweet books.You’re welcome to read it and not care for it – but if you tell me you don’t like it, I’m likely to react like you’re criticizing my sister.

Hinds’ Feet on High Places is an allegory about Much-Afraid. From the back cover of the book: ” Follow Much-Afraid on her spiritual journey through difficult places with her two companions, Sorrow and Suffering. Learn how Much-Afraid overcomes her tormenting fears as she passes through many dangers and mounts at last to the High Places, where she gains a new name and returns to her valley of service, transformed by her union with the loving Shepherd.”

I read Hinds’ Feet for the first time during one of the darkest, loneliest seasons of my life. My circumstances had taken an unexpected turn and I felt that all my hopes and dreams were in ashes around me. I won’t go into all the details, but I had left College Station and moved back home with my mom in Houston. After I got all of my stuff into the house, I was emotionally worn out and physically tired, so I sat down to read for a little bit. I got up hours later, finished with the book (and weeping, which should also not surprise those of you who’ve known me for long ).

I’m delighted to share one of my favorite passages…

In all that great desert, there was not a single green thing growing, neither tree nor flower nor plant save here and there a patch of straggly gray cacti.

On the last morning {Much Afraid} was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone. An old pipe was connected with a water tank. In the pipe was one tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things.

She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.”

The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy!“

Much-Afraid thought of the things which she had seen… Somehow the answer of the little golden flower which grew all alone in the waste of the desert stole into her heart and echoed there faintly and sweetly, filling her with comfort. She said to herself, “He (the Shepherd) has brought me here when I did not want to come, for His own purpose. I, too, will look up into His face and say, ‘Behold me! I am your little handmaiden, Acceptance-with-Joy.’”

This has ever been my prayer for myself – that in every circumstance the Lord brings me, I would lift my face to Him and accept what He gives with Joy.

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