Prognosis: Days of Discouragement

Hannah Hurnard’s allegory, Hind’s Feet on High Places, inaugurated my spiritual journey the first time I read it in my early twenties.  The main character, stunted and deformed Much Afraid[1], struggles to make her way to the mountain heights where she is promised to be whole and to abide with the great and loving Shepherd.  At the summit she will no longer be plagued with her physical or emotional limitations.  In her often harsh journey she finds small encouragements that keep her hopeful.  Here is such a passage:

In all that great desert, there was not a single green thing growing, neither tree nor flower nor plant save here and there a patch of straggly grey cacti.

On the last morning she was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone.  An old pipe was connected with a water tank.  In the pipe was a tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things.

          She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.”

          The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me!  My name is Acceptance-with-Joy.”

I have recalled with great joy that portion of Hurnard’s book when I’ve witnessed a pansy emerging from a crack in a cement sidewalk, or a single bloom surviving in the crevice of a mountain’s stone wall. 

Right now, living in my current prognosis[2], I long for a drop of that joyful anticipation.

The flower pots in my back yard billowed with blossoms and blooms over the summer.  But with the golden leaves now falling from the trees, I donned my gardening gloves and pulled the straggling plants, clearing the pots before the onset of winter.  To my surprise, in one of the pots, hidden under the old dying foliage was a small cluster of perfectly formed spring-green leaves.  If the leaves weren’t falling like snow flakes around me, that new growth could have convinced me it was spring.  I couldn’t pull it out.  I couldn’t deny it the chance to live. But also my heart sank.  “How long can this plant survive?” I asked myself. “Temperatures will drop soon.  One frost will probably finish it off.”

Equal to the wellspring of pure joy those single blooms popping out of cement or stone boulders have given me, the sadness of this tiny plant’s destiny deluged me. Inwardly I sobbed.

I’m convinced that my prognosis is parallel to that plant.  How long can I hold on?  I don’t expect that plant to make it through the next three weeks.  How do I expect to survive the frigid gusting winds of my own impossible situation? Get real! Am I fooling myself that there will be another spring?  It doesn’t matter how hardy this plant is today.  Its death is certain. How certain can my own deliverance be?

I want to be Accept-with-Joy whether my life is abased or abundant.

Could there be another spring when I display the beauty that abides in my roots and new growth?  How hard should I work at weathering the elements that are determined to bring my end?  Will it do any good for me to continue to believe for something better?  Should I now recognize the inevitable and accept-with-joy?

I think I saw Accept-with-Joy in my friend’s face today when out of her desperate situation she rejoiced in the little drips of hope God had provided for her over the last few weeks.  Her countenance displayed a golden beam.

Will holding on bring the joy and glory to God I direly desire?

Another friend, Janet who has lived two years beyond her seven-weeks-to-live prognosis and growing stronger everyday, told me that many receive her story with great joy.  But there are those, even eye-witnesses to her miraculous recovery, who don’t see it and refuse to give God honor for his deliverance of her.

So I, this Much-Afraid, am wondering what to hope for.  What provision should I anticipate?  How will God best receive glory?  Will it be a treacherous winter? If I hold on will spring sprout new blossoms?  Or do I now bow in acceptance, release my expectations and receive with joy what is currently obviously inevitable? 

After Much-Afraid’s arduous journey she did reach the mountain heights and she received everything and more than was promised. I can’t imagine what that might be like for me, but I take encouragement again from God’s Word through these contrasts.

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.  Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way;  say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you."  Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.  The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow... the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Isaiah 35:1-10

What a promise to hang on to! 

The green foliage of the little spring-like plant may soon shrivel up.  But I’m wondering if the woody roots below it may burst forth with new life come spring.

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[1] John Bunyan also has a Much-afraid in his allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress.   Doesn’t “Much-afraid” rightly name many of us in life’s journey?

[2] See my posting “The Prognosis”