I am a woman with feet that have served me well. As a teenager I used to think my feet were beautiful but over the years they have aged faster than the rest of me, displaying the many adventures of life in the multiple scars, newly developing bunions and one small crooked but healed broken toe. Because of this, I have spent a good amount of time pondering God's promise to make my feet like the feet of a deer so that I can walk among the high places.
I love the allegory of hind's feet but I think it's interesting that if God wanted me to walk with Him then why wasn't I born with these graceful and able feet? Rather I learned to walk with regular feet, human and clumsy and prone to wander, stumble and even run in the wrong direction on the wrong path into the wrong places that are not the "high places" God has prepared for me.
But as I look back over my life I realize it's in the mishaps of living and the grace that restores that God shapes the allegorical hind's feet that are conditioned, strong and able to carry me to a place where I am meant to live, high enough to see from His vantage point, with Him.
For many years I have lived in the valleys of life - the places where shadows often distort clear sight and darkness masks the light that radiates from above. The valleys pathes were crafted for my human feet as the low lying roads are the well worn pathes of all humans, the ones who never accept the invitation to be transformed and to journey beyond the very familiar valley. Because my view of life is more often from the valley, I frequently miss the "big picture" that is mine to behold if only I traversed this life, sure footed, able to ascend to the places where I can see clearly, as God has promised.
But peace comes in knowing that God chose to make me as such with these human feet that are good but not great, they are capable to walk valleys but they are not made for navigating outside of the valley's flat existence. It's only when I walk through the valleys, where my humanity fails me and I incur the bumps, bruises and breaks of life that I experience the love of God molding my feet into the feet of a hind.
With thanksgiving, I accept my feet and the pathes they have journeyed because it is through those valleys that I have learned to desire and seek the high places, to walk hand in hand with my God and to live life from His vantage point.
"For who is God, except the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God?
It is God who arms me with strength,
And makes my way perfect.
He makes my feet like the feet of a hind,
And sets me on my high places." Psalm 18:31-32
