Feet Like Hinds

Imagine you are on a steep climb with no railing, and you have stopped looking down on purpose.

That is close to where Habakkuk stands at the end of his song. He has spent most of the book bringing his complaint to God about violence going unpunished. God's answer was that He was raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, which was worse than the problem. Habakkuk has stood on his watchtower and waited. Two verses before today's verse he lists everything that is gone: "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls." That is more than a hard few months. It is the whole living of a farming country, failing one item at a time, and nothing has got better by the time he sings.

Then he sings: "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." A hind is a female mountain deer. What is remarkable about its feet is where they land. A hind does not fly over the cliff. It walks the cliff, setting one hoof down at a time, on ground that would kill an animal less sure-footed. And the "high places" here are steep, exposed heights. Nobody goes up there to admire the view.

So take the promise exactly as wide as it is written. God gives you the footing; He does not give you a way around the rock face. You will still be climbing tomorrow. What changes is what your feet are made of, and the only place that can be proved is on the climb itself. That is why Habakkuk could sing before anything had changed, "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation." The God who made the mountain had promised to steady his feet on it.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 203 is Into Darkness (Psalm 88:18).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna