Psalm 84:5-7 "How Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee...passing through the valley of Baca (weeping), they make it a spring...They go from strength to strength."
When God is our strength, we are blessed. Going through the places of weeping...through the grieving of loss and pain and betrayal and broken dreams and failures - these same ones, whose strength is in God, turn these bad places into springs. Places where people receive life, and even Life itself, the rivers of living water. And if these, the most devastating places and times in our lives can become springs, then to say "they go from strength to strength" makes sense.
If we go through the dark times merely look for the light at the end of the tunnel, we are just looking for the way out and we look back and see the tunnel only as depressing and sad and tortuous.
But if we shift our focus and change our analogy and look at the darkness as the digging of a well - then once we get to water, to the springs, we can come back often and pull up buckets of refreshment that we couldn't have received any other way. And we can be thankful for the work done in darkness that provides living water for us and for us to share.
(written 5/4/2011)
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