Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: REED / READ (02/23/23)
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TITLE: The Trysting Place | Previous Challenge Entry
By Linda Lawrence
03/02/23 -
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What do I do for a living? The question always exasperates me. It has so little to do with who I am!
I want to open my arms wide, do a little dance, and shout, “I . . . read!”
I am what I read. The Word dwells in me. And I dwell in the Word. Through the years I’ve longed to be shaped by the Word of God.
But the words of other believers have often had as deep an affect on me as the Word of God. Often their word pictures become etched into my memory and impel me to recreate or to become what I’ve read. I want to enter the picture.
While still a young woman I read an allegory, Hind’s Feet on High Places. Certain imagery in the story gripped my imagination.
“Much-Afraid remembered that the Chief Shepherd would be leading his flocks to their accustomed watering place beside a lovely cascade on the outskirts of the village. To this place she was in the habit of going very early every morning to meet him and learn his wishes and commands for the day. . .
“(The Shepherd said) ‘I will come and call. . .I shall sing one of the Shepherd's songs. . . when you hear it, come at once and follow me to the trysting place.’”
A romantic, I could see in my mind’s eye the trysting place. Rippling waters flowing between grassy banks, reeds moving in a gentle wind. Oak, aspen, and birch trees intermingled, sunlight filtering through the leaves. I longed for such a “trysting place” with my Shepherd.
Imagine my joy when I was gifted with a large oil painting of the exact scene of my imagination. The painting hangs on the wall I see from my bed. As I fall asleep, I can well-nigh hear the murmur of the gently flowing water. In the morning I can almost feel the warmth of sunlight on my face as it turns the leaves translucent. There’s a spot deep in the shadows of the forest I think of as my personal trysting place. If I could only enter the painting I know where I would go—with my book, a snack, and a cushion for leaning against a tree. I would spend all day there, reading to my heart’s content . . . unless the Shepherd himself arrived!
Through the years, I read Hind’s Feet on High Places several more times, finding many parallels with my own spiritual journey and with the Shepherd’s instruction and encouragement given to me through his written Word.
Eventually we moved to the Willamette valley in Oregon. I discovered there was a covered bridge within walking distance of our new home. I actually gasped and sobbed with joy and wonder when I climbed through a thicket by the bridge crossing Oak Creek and saw the exact scene that was in my painting! Comparing a photo of the creek with the painting you would think they were the same place—reed-lined banks, gently flowing stream, tall and tumbled leafy trees, filtered sunlight. No longer did I need to use my imagination. My dreams are not fantasy. My Shepherd knows me. He prepared a real place for me.
I read where another shepherd wrote of the Good Shepherd, “As for God, His way is perfect. All the LORD’s promises prove true . . . He makes me as surefooted as a deer . . . leading me safely along the mountain heights. . . “
The hind (or deer) in Hind’s Feet on High Places is a symbol of one given the ability to soar, to run and leap to reach the seemingly impossible-to-reach high places—another trysting place.
I couldn’t help but sing the day I headed back to the creek, packing a sack lunch, a cushion, a journal—and a book, the Word.
The crowning touch was spying a deer that day—a hind, in an open field in the distance. I’ve not seen a deer in that field again and I’ve walked that path many times. But that satisfying day I knew my Shepherd was showing the way—and I would follow.
Perfect satisfaction is as elusive as a deer loping up a mountain side. But I know that a satisfying face-to-face encounter will one day be as real and tangible as my very own trysting place is today.
Psalm 18:30-36 NLT
Memoir
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