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Long Obedience

             “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan? (Jeremiah 12:5)

          I haven’t touched on all the topics mentioned as Satan’s attacks from the book FerVent. I need to go back through the book and do the exercises in addition to reading it, but I feel led to return to a book I’ve read at least twice. The title is A Long Obedience In The Same Direction by Eugene Peterson.

          To give you a broad idea, Peterson looks at the Songs of Ascent from Psalm 120-134. They were songs sung as people walked up the path to Jerusalem. You may never have climbed a mountain in a vehicle or on foot. Vehicles tend to snake back and forth to give the car an incline that isn’t too steep. It’s less direct. It takes longer. It affords more opportunities for thieves and other problems, but it makes the trip possible.

          When I was working on my family’s genealogy, I spent a lot of time in cemeteries, and I found that a lot of cemeteries in a mountainous area are built on the sides of steep hills or mountains, partly because it’s land that can’t conveniently be used for other purposes. I learned very quickly that even if the gravestones are positioned to be read going up or down the side of the mountain, my search required that I go back and forth, making the same switchbacks as I would in a car in the Rocky Mountains. It was still difficult.

          But Mr. Peterson doesn’t begin with Psalm 120. He begins with today’s passage because whether we like it or not, we can’t dash up the mountain path. Going up the mountains takes time, and we are limited. We aren’t as swift or strong as horses. We stumble even when there’s nothing to stumble over. At least, I do. We have to face the fact that getting to the mountaintop, to Jerusalem, will take some time and hard work. It will take a long obedience in the same direction instead of bouncing from thing to thing. I find that I tend to bounce – especially recently. 

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