Lead me to the Rock

When you’re just about to leave a place and not sure you’ll ever be back that way again, you think of all the things you wish you could have done if you had had time. So it was that in June of 1999, just before leaving Pakistan for good, I decided to leave the family in Murree head up to the northern areas of Gilgit and Hunza. We had tried to travel there several times before but had always been thwarted by bad weather.

So, decision made, and, quite soon I took a rough but utterly amazing ride on a government bus from Rawalpindi up the Karakoram highway to Gilgit and then on to Hunza. 17 hours later os so, I’m rubbing tired limbs and aching joints and looking around in Karimabad, Hunza. Rent a room in a guesthouse, some food and sleep, and then the next morning, with the sun blazing, up into the mountains. This was not intended to be a major hike, just a more or less aimless wander into the hills around Karimababad.

And what do I remember of that experience of those Northern mountains that bright June morning? Something about God. I remember walking up through the terraced hillsides on the edge of the town - all bustle and the normal sounds of a rural community going about its business, chickens flapping, dogs barking, children calling, oxcarts trundling. Then I turned a corner and all of a sudden a great valley opened up and led onward and upward. Trees gave way to snow fields, and ..... silence. That’s what struck me. The total absence of human activity and sound as the mountain took me into is embrace.

Made me think about God in His immensity. We encounter only a part of Him in his gracious interaction with our human frame, sustaining us, directing, loving us. But there’s a whole other aspect to Himself, that we never fully encounter. God in Himself, utterly awesome, immeasurable and immense. But it's into that aspect of relationship with Himself and intimacy that He leads us. He draws us into Himself, on and ever upward to the silent slopes of His being.

I’ve been focussing in these past few weeks almost exclusively on Psalm 61, 62 and 63, finding much to challenge me about my relationship with God, and much to encourage and comfort me also. Psalm 61 begins with the prayer “When my heart grows faint, lead me to the rock that is higher than I”. So that’s my prayer for today.