Midweek: The Lesson

Even when princes set to scheme against me,

Your servant dwelled on Your statutes.

~ Psalm 119:23 (Alter) 

Imagine Elijah, pursued by the queen's forces for killing the prophets of Baal. Imagine David hiding in caves to escape the hateful designs of the king upon his life. Imagine the disciples of God, fearing and fleeing Paul (before his conversion) as he breathed out threats and racked up a body count of innocents. Fear. Chaos. The unknown. A powerful enemy and what appears to be a serious lack of resources.

Let me tell you a little story...

Chapter One: Bad Decisions. My husband and I took a much needed vacation. Our timing probably wasn't the best --it was just as things were opening up after a certain pandemic, we ourselves were on the tail end of a brief experience with it --but we'd had enough; we needed to get away. Our pick of destination may not have been very wise either --we chose the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee in January --but, again, we'd had enough. I wanted isolation. I wanted to be removed from the busy "normals" of life. So be it! The night we arrived, so did a storm. Snow! Ooh! Ahh! A winter wonderland! But the ice? On a mountain? Not so much. Our dreams of a romantic dinner in town, returning to our mountain hideaway... Our dreams of sightseeing under a Southern sun in forty-degree temps... Gone! Instead, we received for our money an empty fridge, grey skies, and a forty-degree ice-covered slope to the main road. Given little option, we saddled up the luxury SUV we'd rented, hereby dubbed a pavement princess exclusively!, and attempted to procure provisions. 

Chapter Two: The Slope. As we started down the slope leading to the main road, we encountered ice. Slick and terrifying. Terrifying because on one side of the narrow slope was about a foot of brush before the solid rock of the mountain's upside. On the other side of the narrow slope was about a foot of brush before the certain calamity of the mountain's downside.   

        No guardrail. 
                At all. 
With every foot we crept, the rear of our pavement princess slid closer to the edge of the downside while the front threatened to lose traction completely. The option of backing up the slope garnered the same result as the attempt to move down, only in reverse. The front end of the vehicle sought the precipice while the back end struggled to hold the slope. In all my husband's years of driving, he'd never been so unnerved. In all my years of praying, I'd never longed so badly to bounce off of a guardrail.    

Chapter Three: The Lesson. Okay, if I'm being honest, we learned lots of lessons that trip; but here I am, sitting safely in my office almost five years later being shown another. That day I kept wishing for a guardrail, some sort of barrier to keep us from going off the edge. Better to sideswipe some rocks than roll eighty feet down a mountainside! Your servant dwelled on Your statutes. Seeing God's law as the protective barrier that, though we may bounce off it a time or two (or more, if we're particularly inclined to repeat offenses), it keeps us from dropping headlong to our peril. That icy slope represented all sorts of treachery; but having the benefit of a guardrail, as hard as it would have been on our pavement princess were we to ride it all the way to the bottom, would have assured us of safety. God's law, guiding us, keeping us --as hard as it is on our human nature to obey --guards us against the certain peril of leaving the path. Even when the distractions are many, even when fear grips us menacingly, even when all around us is thrown into chaos, even when we cannot know what lies ahead, the statutes of God --if we dwell on them, build our lives on their truth --we have the blessing of a guard and guide as we follow after Christ our conquering King.