I Want to Show You Something
Billy Graham often said, “Mountaintops are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys.”
How often have I prayed for God to remove my difficulties or pains?
I’ve often cried out for Him to smooth out the valleys, to restore my inspiration, to bring back perspective. Surely those things—good perspective, renewed inspiration—must be aligned with what God wants for me... right?
And yet, the valley sometimes seems to grow ever deeper.
Inspiration gives way to survival.
Perspective shifts from five-year plans to just getting through this week—maybe even this day.
Is this really what God wants for me?
In Jeremiah 33, God speaks to His people through the prophet:
“Call to me, and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things you have not known.”
Notice the promise: I will answer you. I will show you.
God didn’t promise to remove their problems. His people were still heading into exile. Jerusalem was still going to fall. But His promise remained unshaken—just as true in the valley as it was on the mountaintop.
“I will answer you.”
“I want to show you something.”
“Call out to me, and open your eyes to what I am doing.”
Calling out to God in the valley takes courage and faith.
A dear friend once told me that the essence of faith is offering God your true heart—whatever state it’s in. He will accept your angry heart, your doubting heart, even your silent heart. You are His, and He will not abandon you.
Not long ago, I was struck again by Job’s words, so raw and honest in his suffering:
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” (Job 13:15)
Why trust God in the deep valleys of life?
From my own journey, I can tell you this: when I’ve had the presence of mind to open my eyes to God’s work in my valley, He’s shown me things I could never have seen or imagined on the mountaintop—His compassion, His wisdom, His faithfulness.
Valleys of pain are part of the human condition. And in them, we all face a choice:
to grit our teeth and endure, emerging embittered or beaten down by life;
or to open our eyes and believe that our Heavenly Father might have something new to show us through our seasons of brokenness.
Henri Nouwen suggests in his book The Life of the Beloved that the Eucharist is a pattern for our human experience—we are chosen, blessed, broken, and then given.
If that’s true, then perhaps before we can be truly given to others, we must first attend the apprenticeship of brokenness—with Jesus as our patient and gentle mentor.
