sharing a most treasured book

I've been waiting a long time to share this book with my children.  Now that we are finished with our Core read-alouds, we have time to tackle it!

My mom read Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard to my brother and I, when I was about the same age as my daughter now.  I loved it!

"The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like Hinds' Feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine High Places."  Habakkuk 3:19

"...the High Places of victory and union with Christ cannot be reached by any mental reckoning of self to be dead to sin, or by seeking to devise some way or discipline by which the will can be crucified.  The only way is by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by a continually repeated laying down of our own will and acceptance of his as it is presented to us in the form of the people with whom we have to live and work, and in the things which happen to us.  Every acceptance of his will becomes an altar of sacrifice, and every such surrender and abandonment of ourselves to his will is a means of furthering us on the way to the High Places to which he desires to bring every child of his while they are still living on earth."

-from the Preface to the Allegory

If we think of High Places as prosperity and peace, they are unattainable in this world.  However, if High Places are considered to be power to overcome selfish tendencies in spite of adversity, to love even when it hurts and to learn to consider it a small thing not to be loved in return, to offer grace and forgiveness in spite of sin, then those heights are accessible to the child of God by trusting and submitting to the life of Christ dwelling within.

Maybe I loved it as a child simply because I could identify so well with a character named Much Afraid, who shrank back from companions like Sorrow and Suffering.  How little she knew of the Shepherd's ways when she began her journey, nor how trusting Him through it would truly transform her.

*Not because transformation is the goal...it is the result of taking part in the journey.  Showing forth the beauty and trustworthiness of the Savior...that is the aim of this traveler!  And when it is not...well, God has a way of putting that right, too.