The Eagle Magazine
"God Walks the Dark Hills"
You may know how this story ends, maybe you don't, but here is what happened. We went to Israel as planned, I had two episodes while I was there but tried to hide it from the group, only Helen was aware of just how bad I felt. We got home around midnight on Friday, I rested all day Saturday and on Sunday morning I preached at Nottingham. That afternoon, around four o'clock, I had a massive heart attack while in the emergency room at the Chester County hospital. Then I spent six months resting and only leaving the house to go to the hospital and doctor's office. It took me over a year to recover. If God wants you to rest, you will rest! As I look back on that period of life, I realize how foolish I was. Why I didn't go to the doctor before my heart attack I'll never know; stubborn, naive, macho, whatever, it was pretty stupid of me to fly half way around the world in the shape I was in. God was good to me and let me live, but for many months I paid the price for my foolishness. Remember the old gospel song; "God Walks the Dark Hills"?
Last night I heard Michael Moore preach on the book of Hosea. During the message he said, "I love Christmas, it's so much fun, but lately Easter has begun to mean so much to me; it might be my favorite holiday." As I thought about that statement later, it occurred to me that we tend to live our lives event to event. A recent survey revealed that most people enjoy planning a vacation as much as the vacation itself. You know what? I can believe that. Looking ahead to a trip, an event, a holiday, that's what keeps us going. It stirs our excitement and moves our imagination.
So...after New Year's Day and before Easter is coming into view, people tend to slip into the mid-winter blues. The days are short, the nights are cold and everything looks so dreary. It's a bad time for those who suffer from depression and anyone that can get down and out. I would imagine that everyone reading this can relate, we all know how it feels to be a little bit blue. This feeling should be thought of as a teaching time, consider the story of Elijah when he fled from Jezebel. He was so depressed he asked God to let him die in the wilderness, "But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers." 1 Kings 19:4. Now I certainly hope you're not in that bad a shape just because mid-winter is here, but I do want you to see that even the most godly among us are subject to the blues, feeling down and alone, broken and used up, it's a universal human experience.
So what of Elijah, how did God deal with this struggling depressed servant? Well; he didn't scold him or remind him of all the good thins of life or even of the unfailing promises of God. He did something very different indeed, "And as he (Elijah) lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God." 1 Kings 19:5-8
God let him rest, perhaps he wept awhile, or cried out of his wounded spirit, but most of all he slept; he rested. God will sometimes give us rest even if we didn't ask for it or say we don't want it. In the year 2020, my wife and I had a trip planned to the Holy Land for ten days. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. A few weeks before we were to leave, I had some pretty serious chest pains while in my office one afternoon. I went home and rested and felt better so I forced it out of my mind. Then about a week before our trip it happened again, only this time a little worse. I had to go home. Autumn, our GPA Executive Assistant at the time, was so concerned she came by the house to see how I was doing. Helen made me stay in the rest of that day and all the next. By mid-morning the next day, I felt fine and said it's probably my gall bladder; I'll see Dr. Rooney when I get back from the Holy Land. Are you thinking, "wow, this guy shouldn't go to Israel in the shape he's in?" Well, my wife and daughter thought the same thing. We didn't cancel, not because we couldn't; we had taken out travel insurance on the trip because my father was very ill at the time, but I just wanted to go so bad and I thought nothing is going to happen to me. For a couple of years, my wife had noticed that long days and stressful meetings seem to be taking more out of me that it used to. One day she said to me, "Maybe you need to slow down, you really need your down time." But I thought, I'm getting older so life takes a little more effort than it used to.
God walks the dark hills, the ways the highways
he walks on the billows, of life's troubled sea,
he walks in the cold dark night, the shadows of midnight,
God walks the dark hills, just to guide you and me.
Well, it's true. For over a year, I walked the dark hills of pain and fear and loneliness and suffering. The most wonderful thing of it is that I never walked one step alone, even when I felt lonely. Helen was a wonderful nurse, but God himself was my great physician and he walked those dark hills with me. Sometimes it's ok to be down a little; sad a little, hurting a little and walking those dark hills in mid-winter. It's ok because God walks with you through all those dark places of life. Resting while you feel the mid-winter blues is alright too. Take a weekend and go away for a do nothing vacation, or set aside some time at home for a staycation. The dark hills may be calling you, it's ok. The chorus of that old song says it about as good as any could.
God walks the dark hills, to guide my footsteps,
He walks everywhere, by night and by day,
He walks in silence, on down the highway,
God walks the dark hills, to show me the way.
