Look at your feet!

1 Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.

I was telling you about my wife’s adventures during her newly found love for desert walks. Many people think of the desert as miles and miles of sand, I know I did. But the Negev Desert is actually very rocky. The ground is hard, dry, steep in some places and full of loose rocks with creepy things lurking underneath. Rivka sometimes takes this one particular off the beaten path down a very steep hill into a beautiful valley and back up to the other side and was telling me about her first time walking this route:

“Some people are outdoorsy kind of people. I would not qualify myself as one at all. So when a good friend first introduced me to this rough terrain, I can’t say I was entirely up for the challenge. It’s more difficult walking down than it is walking back up, believe it or not. You really have to use your upper body weight and especially your knees to keep from slipping forward on the way down. The first time I did this, I held onto my poor friend for dear life. But as we were hiking down that day, I noticed something profound. When I was looking down to the bottom of the valley, I held on way tighter than when I was looking right at my feet. When I looked down right at the steps my feet were taking, I was able to go for a five or ten minutes at a time by myself without holding on. But as soon as I looked too far ahead, fear and doubt that I could make it down consumed me.”

So it is when we walk with the Lord. There’s something to be said for having plans and goals for sure. Don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think the Lord intended for us to look too far ahead to the point of being afraid and overwhelmed. If that is you today, let’s commit to just looking at our feet for a while.

God has great things in store for us ahead and sometimes the road looks long and scary. But let’s just look at the obstacles right in our way for now. The more we focus on getting through one thing at a time, the closer we’ll get to our goal. There’s so much work to be done!