I’ve been on something of a reading binge the last few weeks and I am thoroughly enjoying it. It all started when I entered into a book study with a group of Christian artists in a ministry called Emerge. The book is called The Story of With and I am enjoying it immensely. I ended up reading the book in three days and to be truthful it is my favorite kind of writing, a sort of modern day parable. This drove me back to one of my favorite books another modern day parable or perhaps an allegory called The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrews. Having finished that book I knew I had to go next to Andrews’ follow up book The Notice. In this book Andrews speaks to a person who changed his life, an enigmatic man simply known as Jones. It’s never been quite clear to me if Jones was a real person or an allegorical character representing Christ, but what is obvious is whoever Jones is, he changed the direction of Andy Andrews’ life. The book will do some work on your life too.
The book starts with the true story of Andrews who lost both his parents when he was a teen to young adult and ended up living under a pier. It was there that he “met Jones” who instilled in him a love of reading biographies from which he distilled the principles that became the Traveler’s Gift that put Andrews in the upper echelon of authors and professional speakers in our world. In this particular interaction, Jones is speaking to a long Andy, who is still raw from his loss and questioning the goodness of God. Here is what Jones tells him. I think it’s very pertinent to the way we choose to live our lives.
“Why does everyone think that when people say that ‘God will put a person after His own heart where He wants them to be… that it means God will put them on a mountaintop or in a big house or at the front of the line.”
“Think with me here… everybody wants to be on the mountaintop, but if you’ll remember, mountaintops are rocky and cold. There is no growth on the top of the mountain. Sure, the view is great, but what’s a view for? A view just gives us a glimpse of our next destination—our next target. But to hit that target, we must come off the mountain, go through the valley, and begin to climb the next slope. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning what enables us to summit life’s next peak.”
This is so true. God loves you on the mountaintop and in the valley. He is with you on the mountaintop and in the valley. It’s the valleys that make us appreciate the value of the mountaintop and it’s in the valleys that we learn what we need to get to the next mountaintop. Jones is right. If you’re in the valley look for God and trust Him.
AMOKArts 