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There is a little book, My Shepherd Life in Galilee, written
by Habauch. He had been a shepherd in Galilee and could write
with understanding. Listen, as he describes an incident. It was
late in the evening, when the shadows were already creeping
across the barren land of Palestine. He was leading his sheep
toward the fold. As the darkness descended, he had to lead his
flock through a very narrow ravine. Very little light could
penetrate to the bottom of the gorge. He was seeking a small open
place beyond the ravine, where the sheepfold was. He could feel
the fear of the sheep, threatened by the dangers of the narrow
ravine. As they were crowded by the ravine the sheep pressed upon
the shepherd. In pressing against him they found comfort, warmth
and strength. But that was not all. As the shepherd was crowded
by the sheep, as they pressed against him, he experienced a
warmth, a glow of satisfaction and a joy, because the sheep
needed him and found strength in him. Both the shepherd and the
sheep found each other in the dark narrows of the canyon. And the
shepherd was pleased.
Now we get the complete picture of the give and take of faith.
Perhaps it is in the crises of life, as you and I have to face
them, in the narrows of life where we are crowded in against God,
that we begin to know him and find strength and hope, faith and
joy. We see beneath the shallow surface of life and begin to
experience peace. And, surprisingly, we begin to glimpse an even
deeper fact, that while I am being

crowded in on God, that God is experiencing joy because his
children are beginning to discover him again and draw close to
him and glimpse eternal things. Perhaps it is most in the valley
of the shadow that we face reality, and grow in the joy of divine
fellowship.
But there are still problems. Not everyone enters the valley
of the shadow with faith. Some enter only with bitterness, and
this is utter lostness. Some are so hardened that they cry out,
"There is no God." Some are so crushed that they ask: "Why has
God done this to me?" Others cry out: "I can't take it," and then
collapse. They would not admit that the Shepherd was there. God
even understands these, and loves them; he seeks to enter into
their bewilderment and lead them through the valley into a broad
and open life of faith. God does not get mad at us in our
struggles; he draws closest to those who are having the hardest
time. The narrows are not a dead-end street. Stay with it in
trust and you will discover that the valley of the shadow opens
up in God's presence and at the gates of the eternal. Life is
going somewhere; but ravines are a part of the journey. The path
through to the other side of the shadow is discovered through the
passport of faith.
In the valley of the shadow there is light. "Thou art with
me." The splendor of God breaks through. Here we are forced into
an awareness of God, or we do not survive.
There is a plaintive story by Christine Anthony that came out
of the last war: I Am Fifteen And I Don't Want To Die. I am much
more than 15 and I don't want to die -- not yet. Life is
meaningful and I want to hold on to it. God made us that way. The
picture back of the story is that of a very dark valley. A family
is trapped in a flooded basement in the siege of Budapest. Close
your eyes and see it: The water is rising, the basement is
crowded with refugees; it's dark, there is no food, little hope;
there is death on the outside in the street, there is death on
the inside. This is the valley of the shadow. At first, the
darkness is all that we can see; then, strangely, a kind of light
glows in the darkness. You can't tell where it is coming from.
Now we begin to understand. In the midst

of all this fear, you begin to realize a courage that matches the
fear. In the midst of hate, there appears a love that outweighs
the hate. Here in a situation created by greed, hate and
injustice, you begin to see in this little group of people a
self-forgetfulness and a self-giving that is greater than the
prevailing threat.
There was Pista, a Hungarian soldier, separated from his
command; though a stranger, he joined himself to this tiny
despairing group huddled in the basement. We see him going out
every day into the streets of death, risking capture or death.
One day he went to find sulfa drugs for an old man who had
pneumonia and was facing death in the damp cold basement. Somehow
he found a little apothecary shop in one of the tiny alleys of
the doomed city. The next day he goes for canned milk for a
starving baby whose mother could not feed him. The next it's
candles for the darkness. The next day Pista goes after a priest
because the old man is dying and needs confession. Pista stays
out there under fire until he finds a priest and brings him to
the basement, where the priest also marries Eve and Gabriel who
love each other and want to marry before they die. Pista moves in
and out of the scene as an angel of mercy. And you see God in
Pista -- the mystery of God who can produce such a boy in this
young soldier who gave his life to help others.
More than this, you see God in the love of the little mother
for her baby; you see God in the love of Eve for Gabriel; you see
God in the courageous love of the old priest who came and
ministered to them with the gentleness of Christ. You see God in
people, there in the valley of the shadow; and you see God there
in the spirit working night and day on his own. God in the
shadows, God in the narrows, holding his children close to him.
This little group never forgot the strange spiritual presence
that was so real in those hopeless days. God in the narrows,
pressing in upon the people; they pressing upon him and pressing
in on each other until they became a community.
In that basement they were facing death. They could have
fought each other for every crust of bread. But something

happened in that darkness. They felt each other's pain; they
undergirded each other's weakness; they shared each other's
suffering and each other's joy. This is what God wants in his
world. Maybe this is the meaning of the cross. God allows crisis
in life so that falseness may be burned away and his children
discover the deep and beautiful meaning of love.
Traveling in England soon after the last war I experienced two
meaningful surprises. Some English friends were showing us around
Plymouth. We were viewing the ruins of Plymouth, the devastated
buildings, the places where buildings had been and were no more.
Our friends had lived through the saturation bombing of Plymouth.
They described the terror of death every night, the fire bombs,
the falling buildings, and they underneath the whole business.
Friends were being killed, loved ones were losing their lives.
Then a strange thing happened: they revealed to us a kind of
nostalgia. They were saying: "Well, there was such a sense of
oneness then. People cared so much for each other; they were
really concerned for all their neighbors. They did everything
they possibly could for each other. People suffered with each
other. There was a wonderful spirit of oneness in those days." It
is strange how God really brings people together in the narrows
of life.
Later I took a taxi from Stratford on Avon down to Birmingham
late at night. Before we had driven far, the driver began talking
about the war. He said: "My father was a firefighter. I was a
little boy. Every night my father had to go out and fight the
flames, as fire bombs continued to rain down. I never knew
whether my father would come home alive. We lived this way, day
after day." Then he added, "You know, everybody was somebody in
those days; everybody believed in each other. Everybody supported
everybody else." As my taxi driver was describing all this, it
actually seemed that he was homesick for the old spirit of
caring, of everybody being somebody. This sounds strange; but
somehow in the valley of the shadow the realities of life come to
the surface, the presence of God is vividly near. At times God
leads his children through the narrows so they discover real life
again and rise above their selfish blindness.

I have seen The Lost Colony twice; it plays on Roanoke Island
off the coast of North Carolina. We looked at this little group
of men and women and one baby crowded into their small wooden
fortress. They were in a foreign land, surrounded by hostile
Indians. England had forgotten them, because of the war with
Spain. Some of them were being killed every day. It was a picture
of despair.
But something else appears: Their faith, their love, how they
stood together. You remember their stubborn dream of a new world
about to be born. They suffered and disappeared, but the dream
lived. Under God the dream lived and we are here today. The dream
came out of the valley of the shadow, out of the narrows of life.
I remembered Old Tom, the drunken bum, who was probably
"shanghaied." He probably got drunk in England and awoke on
Roanoke Island. But Tom found himself, came to himself, in the
struggles of their dangerous plight. We see Tom, alone, standing
guard on the wall of the fortress while all the others,
exhausted, slept around the tiny fire within the palisade. The
old drunk, the no-good, up there standing guard, alone. He is
heard to whisper: "Tom, the wilderness hath made a man of thee."
And that was the truth, he had become a man. He had found
himself, he had come to himself, in the wilderness, in the valley
of the shadow.
This was the secret power of the early Christians. Hiding out
in the catacombs under Rome, being killed every day. They had
seen Stephen stoned to death. But God was so visible in their
plight. The Christ was with them; they carried on until the
church was born. They sang the Psalms of hope; they quoted and
quoted again this Psalm 23. The blaze of the kingdom of Christ
was visible to them; and they made the dream visible to others.
They were forced in upon God; and God was glad to be in their
midst. They stood as one person against the terrors of their day.
The apostle Paul lived in the valley of the shadow and he knew
that for him to live was Christ, or he wouldn't make it. It was
out of the narrows and crises of life that Paul

cried out: "In shipwreck, in beatings, in prison, in death, in
all these things; in tribulation, in distress, in persecution, in
famine, in peril and sword; not separate from these things, not
apart from these things; but walking right through the perils of
life." That's where God is incarnate. Christ, God is in Christ,
in the midst of life -- real life -- the life we live every day.
This is the victory: God in the midst of life -- Christ with us --
coming into the existence, into our crises to bring us through
into life's eternal fulfillment.
When a person comes face to face with death and survives,
there is something indelible etched on his memory. I have faced
it, and I know others who have faced it. It is like a flash of
lightning on a dark night. The blazing images linger in your mind
after the light is gone. Years later, you still see what you saw
in the flash of lightning. The crises of life, the valley of
shadows, bring reality to the soul; they reveal God to man.
Somehow the meaning of life is seen vividly.
Several years ago my wife and I were in an automobile
accident. By the grace of God we came through without being hurt.
But we vividly remember every detail, every second, every move of
the car, our own feelings and our thoughts at that moment. All
this written on our minds and souls, forever. You face death and
reality comes clear; only a deep sigh of gratitude to God is the
inescapable answer. You are still alive; the sun still shines.
You are still with your loved ones, you can still carry on in the
midst of life -- the glory of it all -- God realized in a moment of
possible tragedy. This photographic exposure leaves you a bigger
better person. You become of age.
Douglas Steere reminds us that we all die many little deaths
and that we learn from these little deaths. I remember my
mother's death when I was a boy: The separation was a shock; the
loss was deep. And, yet, I emerged from this little death a new
person, with a realization of new responsibilities, and with a
new sense of the full dimensions of life that depended on me now
as a person. Later when my father died I went through a little
death of lostness, separation, but also new birth, a new facing
up to life as a man now totally on my own.

Once, as a small boy, I got very sick as we were visiting in
the country about seven miles from a doctor. I was scared; I
thought I was going to die, but I didn't. Through this little
death I became a bigger boy, a wiser boy; I was beginning to be a
man. It all happened in the valley of the shadow.
In many ways, at this moment, America is going through the
valley. We see the concentration of evil; we admit our lack of
commitment, our lack faith. We are frightened, and ought to be.
God is saying something to us in the narrows. He is demanding
that we discover values, that we come to a new dedication to
truth and integrity, that we accept the truth of love and
affection, that we accept a new sense of destiny based on moral
values and righteousness. Again and again the love of God shocks
us into a new awareness.
Rufus Jones, a great practical mystic, writes about an
experience in his own life. He was despondent over the loss of
his son. In his despondency he was walking aimlessly down the
street of a great city. All of a sudden he noticed a tiny girl
run down those brownstone steps. She ran through a great iron
gate out onto the sidewalk. The gate slammed shut behind her and
it locked itself. When the little girl realized what she had done
-- that she had shut herself out of her familiar world, her home,
her loved ones -- she rushed back to the gate. She held on to the
iron bars; she shook it and beat upon it. She screamed and
waited, but she couldn't get in. She was trapped in a strange,
hostile world. All of a sudden the door to the great house swung
open. The mother rushed down the steps, opened the gate, picked
up the child in her arms and said: "Honey, didn't you know I'd
come? Didn't you know I would come?" In his personal despair,
Rufus Jones walked on down the street, but he says: "Now I knew
that there was love behind my own shut gate." God had led him
through the valley and back into faith, and there was peace. He
now knew in his own broken heart that God would take care of his
son in his death, and that God would take care of him in his
sorrow.
The story of the thief on the cross next to Christ has always
intrigued me. I am grateful that the New Testament

recorded that incident. It opens the door of hope. A thief, a bad
man who had misused his life, is being executed on the cross next
to Jesus. In the agony of crucifixion, the dying thief saw the
emptiness, the uselessness, the evil of his own life. He saw the
real meaning of life revealed in the gentle, loving, forgiving
person dying on the cross next to him. (And Christ is always on
the cross next to ours -- don't forget it.) The thief couldn't
understand it; but he saw that love was real. God broke into his
mind and revealed himself to the dying man. All heaven broke
loose. The thief cried out with his last breath: "Master, Master,
remember me when you come into your kingdom." He was beholding
the open-endedness of life. It was not a dead-end street. Life
was going somewhere and he wanted to go. Jesus, in spite of his
own agony turned his head and whispered: "This day shall thou be
with me in Paradise." A wandering child of God had been snatched
out of the narrows of life into the vast, loving openness of the
eternal. It took God two crosses to bring about that miracle: The
thief's cross of revelation and need; Jesus' cross of love and
forgiveness. If all this is open to a repenting thief, surely it
is open to you and me: God has a next step in every crisis, for
us personally, or for our nation or for our world. But we have to
accept it.
Christ on a cross, Christ in the narrows, Christ beyond the
narrows; Christ in the resurrection. It is in this mystery that I
rediscover hope, and by this hope we are saved. And in this
strength we move as the redeemed people of God out into the world
to proclaim God's destiny for humanity.

Oh, King, oh, Captain, wasted,
Wan with scourging,
Strong beyond our speech
And wonderful with woe.
Whither, relentlessly,
Wilt thou still be urging
The maimed and halt
That have no strength to go.
Peace! Peace!
Why must we love thee so?
Because, because He is our hope!

We do not bring God into the situation, into the narrows of
life; God is already there, ministering to his people. We meet
him there. We obey and enable God to realize his purposes through
us. If need be he wipes away all tears from our eyes -- there
shall be no more sorrow there. "And there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying (Revelation 21:4)." We are eternally
in the hands of a Christ-like God -- a heavenly Father.
And this is the lesson of the valley of the shadow of death:
We walk through the valley sustained by an almighty Father who is
love. The frightened sheep crowd close to the Shepherd; and God
is pleased that his children have come home. We have met him in
existence where we struggle; he has led us through to life.

Yea, though I walk
Through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
For thou are with me.
Thy rod and thy staff
They comfort me --

And fashion a new world!
Thy rod protects us from evil. Thy staff guides us in paths of
righteousness. Until we, at last, are home.