I saw something at school a few weeks back that really impacted me. I saw two very young, elementary children come out of the high school doors where the buses unload each morning. They walked through the midst of high school students on their way to the elementary school.
So what, you ask?
That probably doesn’t sound like much of a big deal to most people. But let me take you back to when I was in school. I still remember dad taking me out and giving me a very stern lecture of the dos and don’ts of school. This was all on the first morning of kindergarten. One of the rules was to stay away from the high schoolers. Don’t get near them. Keep your distance. There was no ambiguity to it. I started my school career with a fear of anyone older than third grade!
As a kindergartener, I really didn’t see any high schoolers. We were in our room all day with Mrs. Yoder. I think it was only a half day of school, but I don’t remember much about how I got there or got home. As I was thinking about this, it surprised me that the memory was a blur. I’m assuming that I rode the bus.
Things would soon change as I got older.
It was a different era. The high school boys on my bus were mean. You don’t know what being bullied is all about until you wear the stone of someone’s size 10 class ring on the back of your skull a few times. If you thought you had the right to sit anywhere on the bus, you needed to think again. A couple of the larger highschoolers took great pleasure in throwing you in a seat and sitting on you the entire ride to school while the vibrations of their flatulating massaged the knots out of your back. They were disgusting pigs!
Did the bus driver do anything about it? Of course not! You were afraid to open your mouth and evidently, the driver never looked in the mirror. For a point of clarification, this all changed after Mrs. Singer became our bus driver! Before her, though, you travelled at your own risk.
In school wasn’t much better. As you hit Jr. High, you had no choice but to go into “The Senior Hallway,” a place where angels feared to tread. Seniors ruled that hallway, and you were an intruder. Smaller kids fit very nicely into lockers and trash cans. You accepted getting stuffed into these cramped quarters and just waited for the older kids to go away, hoping a lock hadn’t been placed on the locker door.
Can you understand why I was so amazed to see these little kids walk out of the high school doors and through a mob of high school students? Seeing Peter walk on water is probably the closest feeling I could have to this moment! Those kids walking through a sea of high school students was nothing short of a modern walk-on-water miracle!
The elementary kids walking with confidence through the enemy’s territory made me think that this is exactly what it ought to be like for the Christian living in this world.
There is a familiar passage of Scripture that I think we apply correctly but miss the original meaning. Psalms 23:4 says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” This is used when we talk about death and the dying process. I’ve used this at funerals and it’s a fair usage. However, it wasn’t cancer, old age, heart attack, stroke, or disease that brought a person to the “valley of the shadow of death.” Read Psalm 23:5.
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
David knew what it was to be hated and hunted by enemies. It all began with King Saul’s hatred and jealousy. David said to Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s best friend, “… Thy father certainly knoweth that I have found grace in thine eyes; and he saith, Let not Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved: but truly as the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death.” (1 Samuel 20:3) David’s declaration in Psalm 23:4 is birthed from the fact that his enemy could easily bring him to death – and was trying to do that!
I want to be one of the Lord’s confident kids. I want to be able to walk through the enemy’s territory like that elementary child walking alone through a crowd of highschoolers. I want to “fear no evil” and sense that “His rod and staff” are comforting me. I want to have that table prepared “in the presence of mine enemies” so that they might know that “greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)
Wherever you go today, remind yourself of the truth found in Psalms 60:12 and be encouraged. “Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.”
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