Through  the valley

 Psalm 23        The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

  I know that I use a lot of quotes to communicate. They are drawn from books, hymns, movies, television, past conversations, and, well, from anywhere and everyone. I love a good turn of a phrase. Also I am amazed at how seemingly random things and events run together and compliment each other to point to greater and deeper thoughts and understandings. Which makes me repeat, more often than is necessary, “it’s like there’s a plan here, but I wonder who planned it.” That particular quote lets me put the entirety of the world into the loving, knowing, and wise hands of God. And, in this past week, two separate things slammed together in my mind to show me once again that God is in His heaven, He is in command, and all will be right with the world.

  The first thing was a simple post on Facebook, shared by a good number of my friends that are pastors, teachers, and laymen. The post simply states, “If you find yourself in the valley of the shadow of death, keep walking.” Beyond referencing the Psalm printed above, the post does repeat the idea that God will guard and keep us, even though we travel so close to death that we find ourselves in its very shadow.

  The second thing is the pressing of braille books these past two weeks. As the braille groups  were going through the assembly line of punching holes, placing sheets in metal sleeves,running the sleeves through the press, and collating the sheets into the final Book of Acts, I realized that we were being incredibly disrespectful to the paper. Harvey and Van would punch a line of holes along one side; Lupe, JoAnne, Donna, and Joyce shove it in the aluminum sleeve; Pat and I run the sheets through press (which riddles the pages with bumps on both sides); and Susan and Carol lace them together with plastic to form the books. The paper is pierced, man-handled, stomped on and stitched together. Once they were clean, pristine, and perfect, but, after we get through with them, they have been folded, spindled, and mutilated.

  Both these things go together to form a wonderful lesson. We may want only peace, quiet, and even boring days. Days that do not hassle, bother, and inconvenience us. We only want sunny, pleasant days, free from worry and care. But we will have days of deep darkness. We will get hurt, abused, and twisted in pain, worry, and sorrow. But through all these dark and even deadly things, God is still leading us on. We may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but God leads us past that shadow, past the death, and on to life and sun. We may be folded, spindled, mutilated, but those folds, scars, and wounds make us wiser and useful to some service of God later on.

  Plain, smooth paper cannot speak to the blind. It can’t speak to anyone. For the seeing, paper has to be stained, inked, or smeared with graphite to communicate and speak any message. For the blind, the paper has to be pressed and crumpled in a wonderful way to sing the Gospel of God and display the wonder of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross. In a similar manner, we do not want to be put out. We do not want to be in pain or go through trouble. God, however, in His infinite wisdom, leads us through such travail teaching us wonderful lessons of surrender, reliance, and trust in His rulership and comfort. In so doing, we become greater messengers and proclaimers of His love and healing. Blessed are the bones that God breaks, because they teach us (and those around us) of His providence and care. Blessed are the scars we wear in His work, for they show how God leads us through evil to His peace. Blessed are we when we can look back on the storms and strife of life seeing that our Father was carrying us through them all in His loving arms.                        

 In His peace,

Pastor Red Etzel