“The Lord is your protector; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not beat down on you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time and forever.” (Psalm 121:5-8 NASB)
As a young adolescent on a hot summer day, much like today, a new graduate of the eighth grade, I knew the day of September would come quickly and high school awaited me. I spent most of my days playing baseball or basketball with the neighborhood boys. Too young to have a job, too unwise to save any of the change my parents blessed me with, and too tired of carrying newspapers, I decided on that day where the pavement was so hot that you could feel the heat through the soles of your shoes and there was an apparent shortage of shade, I was going to visit the home of a young girl who came down every summer to spend the season with her cousins. We were in the same Sunday School Class, and it seemed that we liked each other. I mean I assumed that she liked me by her kindness which I wrongly perceived as flirtation. I went to her cousin’s house, only a few streets over and a couple of blocks south of my house. Her cousins informed me that she was staying at another relative’s house on the far southside. Disappointed, but not deterred, I decided to make an unannounced visit. There were no cell phones and calling on a pay phone was not an option. I did not have that kind of money, not the ten cents that it cost to make a call. I will admit that as I walked to the far southside that no phone booth (Look that up if you don’t know what’s a phone booth. Google it!); no phone booth I passed was omitted from my stopping and checking to see if perhaps someone had left some change in the coin return slot at the left-hand side of the rotary phones in the booth. (Look that one up too!) No luck! Long story short, I walked for miles. If I had walked just a few more blocks, I would have been in another county and another town. Don’t feel sorry for me now. I find the house and my friend comes to the door. She greets me cordially, but informs me that she cannot have any company. I smile on the outside, but was shattered on the inside. Don’t feel sorry for me. Afterall, I made the decision to make the unannounced visit. As I started walking away, she calls me back and tells me when she is going back up north. And, get this, she says she will be glad to see her boyfriend. Okay, you can feel a little bit sorry to for me. Later in life I would find out this boyfriend would play basketball at UCLA, play ball in the NBA, become a star in television shows and movies, and an acclaimed director in Hollywood. Back to the story. I have a long walk back home, same heat and same clothes; only difference is that they were saturated with sweat. My feet are tired and If someone were to ask me to remove my tennis shoes, I would have to warn them to step back ten paces – at the least. I decided to walk to my aunt’s house, Aunt Autumn. She lived near the edge of the city, right before getting to another small town at the time. Aunt Autumn, always so nice and compassionate. She fed me, gave me water to drink, and asked me how I was going to get back home. I told here that I would walk and not to worry. When I set out on my journey home, I decided to use my math fact about the shortest distance between two points was a straight line connecting those points. So I walked through muddy fields, dangerous neighborhoods, walked through areas of town I had not known, and places where people of my ethnicity at the time were not so friendly. Now here comes the message behind this true story.
I was disappointed, dejected, definitely dirty from sweat, and my “best” tennis shoes, which were my only shoes, were covered with so much mud that you would have thought, at a glance, they were a dark pair of boots. I did not try to hitch a ride, just kept hoofing it through dangers seen and unseen. I was thirsty and the energy from the food that my aunt provided had evaporated. Yet, I walk on. I pressed on! As I got back to my block, I see a friend and tell him about my journey. He laughs and asks me, “Are you stupid?” And then he says, “The Lord must have been watching over you.” I concurred by the shaking of my head in the affirmative.
The message: On your journey through the places and spaces of your life, you will run into disappointment. Your plans will be blocked. Your walk down the road of life will exhaust you. You will have some undesirable experiences. At times you will feel serious dejection. Your best will not seem to be good enough. You will make some decisions that you wish you should not have made. There will be dangers seen and unseen. But here is the point, “Keep pressing on for the Lord will see you through!” If you ever feel alone, don’t fret! The Lord is your keeper, and He will watch your going in and coming out. He will see you through! You will be saddened by something, but stand up tall and hold your head up high! Look to the hills from whence commeth your help. The Lord will see you through! When you feel like no one cares, realize the Lord does. He’s watching over you. And He will see you through. As I looked back over my life, you take a minute and do the same and you will reach the identical conclusion, “The Lord will see you through!” Have a better day! Be blessed!
“God bless you and keep you, God smile on you and gift you, God look you full in the face and make you prosper.” (Numbers 6:24-26 The Message Bible)
Still committed to the climb,
Mark L. King