Lessons learned

"At last she put her hand in his and said softly, 'My Lord, I will tell you what I learned."

'Tell me,' he answered gently. 

'First, I learned that I must accept with joy all that you allowed to happen to me on the way and everything to which the path led me! THat I was never to try to evade it but to accept it and lay down my own will on the altar and say, 'Behold me, I am they little handmaiden Acceptance-with-Joy.'

He nodded without speaking, and she went on, "Then I learned that I must bear all that others were allowed to do against me and to forgive with no trace of bitterness and to say to thee, 'Behold me - I am they little handmaiden Bearing-with-Love,' that I may receive power to bring good out of this evil."

Again he nodded, and she smiled still more sweetly and happily.

"The third thing that I learned was that you, my Lord, never regarded me as I actually was, lame and weak and crooked and cowardly. You saw me as I would be when you had done what you promised and had brought me to the High Places, when it could truly be said, ' THere is none that walks with such a queenly ease, nor with such grace, as she.' You always treated me with the same love and graciousness as though I were a queen already and not wretched little Much-Afraid." Then she looked up into his face and for a little time could say no more, but at last she added, "My Lord, I cannot tell you how greatly I want to regard others in the same way."

A very lovely smile broke out on his face at that, but he still said nothing, only nodded for the third time and waited for her to continue.

"The fourth thing," said she with a radiant face, "was really the first I learned up here. Every circumstance in life, no matter how crooked and distorted and ugly it appears to be, if it is reacted to in love and forgiveness and obedience to your will can be transformed. 

"Therefore I begin to think, my Lord, you purposely allow us to be brought into contact with the bad and evil things that you want changed. Perhaps that is the very reason whey we are here in this world, where sin and sorrow and suffering and evil abound, so that we may let you teach us so to react to them, that out of them we can create lovely qualities to live forever. That is the only really satisfactory way of dealing with evil, not simply binding it so that it cannot work harm, but whenever possible, overcoming it with good. 

At last he spoke, "You have learned well, Grace and Glory. Now I will add one thing more. It was these lessons which you have learned which enabled me to change you from limping, crippled Much-Afraid into Grace and Glory with hind's feet. Now you are able to run, leaping on the mountains and able to follow me wherever I go so that we need never be parted again."

Lessons from the High Places

Hannah Hurnard 

Hinds Feet on High Places