2. What Is Promised
2
What Is Promised
Two young Americans with high adventure in their hearts arrived in the city of Quito, Ecuador, on their way to the “Great Amazon Rain Forest” east of the Andes. They were going on a six-week trek and planned to write a book about their experiences. (Six weeks ought to be enough for that, oughtn’t it?) They had been to an army surplus store before they left home and bought everything the salesman told them they would need—things like waterproof hammocks with built-in mosquito nets, canvas water bags, insect repellent, snakebite kits, machetes, pith helmets, fancy pocket knives, pressure lanterns, floating flashlights, safari shirts and shorts, guns and ammunition, fish hooks, reels, rods, bait and sinkers, dehydrated foods, cooking utensils, and heavy leather combat boots with extra high tops to prevent snakebite. What more could they want? There was, it occurred to them when they reached Quito, one thing—the language—and when they learned that a jungle missionary was in town, they came to see me.
There would be Indians where they were going, wouldn’t there? Well, maybe, but that would depend on exactly where. Quichuas? That, too, would depend. There were seven or eight tribes on that side of the Andes. The men were a little vague about the route they would take, but it looked as if they were going where they would not find any inhabitants at all, or, if they did, they would not be Quichuas.
“Oh, well, just give us a few phrases,” they said. “Indian languages are pretty much the same anyway, aren’t they?”
They described their equipment to me with great pride, and I could see that it was not going to be of much use. I wanted to tell them that what they ought to have was a guide, but they had asked only for help on the language and not for advice. So off they went, full of confidence. Perhaps they found their way all right, survived, and even wrote the book. I never heard of them again.
Sometimes we come to God as the two adventurers came to me—confident and, we think, well-informed and well-equipped. But it has occurred to us that with all our accumulation of stuff, something is missing. There is just one thing we will have to ask God for, and we hope he will not find it necessary to sort through the other things. There’s nothing there that we’re willing to do without. We know what we need—a yes or no answer, please, to a simple question. Or perhaps a road sign. Something quick and easy to point the way.
What we really ought to have is the Guide himself. Maps, road signs, a few useful phrases are good things, but infinitely better is someone who has been there before and knows the way.
Is there someone?
The Lord is my Shepherd. He can see to everything if we are willing to turn it all over (even the equipment, even the route), but we will not do this unless we believe he means what he says. Can his word be trusted? He has made countless promises. Is he going to fulfill them?
To say yes to these questions is to have faith. It is to start following. The sheep, trusting the shepherd, trots after him down the trail.
But the picture of the Eastern shepherd with his robes and staff, the flock of sheep, the stony path through the ravine, the dark valley, and the grassy place with the quiet pool are so remote from our lives as to seem no more than a romantic painting from another country and another age. We live in towns and cities and suburbs. Our days are full of perplexities far removed from the things that bother rams and ewes and lambs. We muddle along through the thousand decisions of an ordinary day. When we are aware of the need for help in one of them, it is not one relating to good pasturage or a water supply. Time and money fill our minds: how to get them, how to use them, how to save them. Where shall I set the thermostat today? The price of fuel has gone up so frighteningly. And for breakfast—have I time to make pancakes? Can we afford bacon? Should the children take their lunches to school (it takes time to make a lunch) or should they buy them (it costs two dollars)? Shall I take the freeway to work today and pay a bridge toll, or shall I save the money and spend the time to go the long way? Silly things, trivialities, but we cannot escape them.
Then there are the serious things. A student has to decide where to go to college, what to major in, whom to marry, what job to prepare for, where to find that job. After college he must decide where to live, how to pay for the house, the car, the furniture, the things that seem so much more indispensable than green pastures.
But the God of the pastures is, let us not forget, the God of everywhere else. He knows just as much about suburbia or the inner city. He is not at a loss to know what to do with us, no matter where we are or what we are anxious about. Every last thing that enters our heads is known to him.
But the “guidance of God”—is it reasonable to expect such a thing in this day and age? Has he ever made any promises that I can get hold of? Is there anything that applies to my needs this Tuesday? Are the promises (to use a badly overworked word) relevant? Might not the advice of a trained guidance expert be more likely to help me?
When the question of relevancy is raised, the next question ought to be: relevant to what? As C. S. Lewis said, “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” The Bible is relevant—more relevant, I am convinced, more accurate, more trustworthy, more totally applicable to my “case” as a human being than anything a person, no matter how welltrained, can tell me. It is the place to begin. It is the foundation, the only sure one. What I learn from other sources may help me a great deal, as stones to be laid on the foundation, and it would be foolish of me to brush aside other kinds of help that might be available to me. They are good gifts, and gifts of whatever kind come to us, we are told, from the Father of lights. But we can start with the Bible.
We are talking about guidance of the most fundamental kind. Although the shepherd picture may, at a superficial glance, look irrelevant to modern life, a deeper understanding of what is taught in that beautiful Twenty-third Psalm may come to us when we find ourselves in a crisis. If we actually experience the valley of the shadow, everything but the Living Word of God may then look utterly irrelevant. A man learns he has an incurable disease. A house burns to the ground, destroying a manuscript on which years have been spent. A business fails. A son or daughter rejects the way their parents have taught them and breaks their hearts. Death comes into our house.
The question of relevancy at such a time is turned completely over. The news on television, the menu for dinner, the committee meeting—all that occupied our days suddenly becomes meaningless. The familiar looks unfamiliar (who has not felt the incongruity of the sun’s shining as usual when our world has collapsed?), and we lose our bearings. Rock walls on all sides, shadows, no escape—and all at once the words shine like a light. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” Perhaps then, for the first time, we know ourselves to be sheep—stupid, helpless, bewildered, and desperate. We need not then rush out and search frantically for a shepherd. He’s there. He is our Shepherd. He hasn’t, for a single moment, forgotten his job.
I suppose it was because my mother so often had to say to us children, “How many times have I told you?” that I was impressed, when a very small child, with the words of the hymn “How Firm a Foundation”: “What more can He say than to you He hath said?” God had to repeat things, too. He had said all we needed to hear, and yet we had not heard. Had he to say them over and over to us? Yes. That was the truth of it. The Bible contains thousands of promises, a great number of which concern guidance. Nearly every one of the sixty-six books has some word about how God led someone or how he promises to lead those who want to be led, from the Lord God’s taking the man Adam and putting him in the garden he had made for him, telling him what to do and what not to do, to the Lamb’s leading those who have washed their robes: “And he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
There are promises of special care for special needs: “He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”
If you can’t see the way before you: “I will lead the blind in a way that they know not, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.”
If you are thirsty or in need of refreshment of some kind: “He who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.”
If no way looks possible at all: “And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be raised up.”
If you are confused or distressed: “I will lead him and requite him with comfort.”
If you falter or are fearing failure: “Thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling . . . ?”
If you are lonely or tired: “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”
Is this what you would call a relevant list? Does it touch on anything you need right now? They are all promises dependent on the presence of the Guide himself.
I would far rather have a guide than the best advice or the clearest set of directions.
When I lived in the forest of Ecuador, I usually traveled on foot. Except for one occasion when I went off alone (and quickly learned what a bad mistake that was), I always had with me a guide who knew the way or knew much better than I did how to find it. Trails often led through streams and rivers that we had to wade, but sometimes there was a log laid high above the water we had to cross.
I dreaded those logs and was always tempted to take the steep, hard way down into the ravine and up the other side. But the Indians would say, “Just walk across, señorita,” and over they would go, confident and light-footed. I was barefoot as they were, but it was not enough. On the log, I couldn’t keep from looking down at the river below. I knew I would slip. I had never been any good at balancing myself on the tops of walls and things, and the log looked impossible. So my guide would stretch out a hand, and the touch of it was all I needed. I stopped worrying about slipping. I stopped looking down at the river or even at the log and looked at the guide, who held my hand with only the lightest touch. When I reached the other side, I realized that if I had slipped he could not have held me. But his being there and his touch were all I needed.
The analogy breaks down, of course. If our Guide is God, he can hold us from any slipping. He could, if he chose, carry us across bodily. But the lesson the Indians taught me was that of trust. The only thing I really needed, the touch of a steady hand, they could provide. If I had been inclined to come to a halt in the middle of the log and raise nasty questions or argue their ability to keep me from falling, my trust would have collapsed and so would I.
I have found in the Bible plenty of evidence that God has guided people. I find, too, assurance that he is willing to guide me. He has been at it for a long time. His hand reaches toward me. I have only to take it.