“I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.” (Ps 34:4,NIV)
Valleys are incredible things because they are naturally part of the terrain of most environments. I mean if you have done any amount of driving from Perth to let’s say Brookton, there are many high hills and many low dips along the way. And this is life in a way right? We are on a journey from A (birth) to B (death) and along the way there are going to be some incredible mountain type highs with some equally opposite shocking lows. Well brothers and sisters, might I encourage you that if you have called upon the Lord to be saved, Jesus is behind the wheel and NEVER EVER stops the car to get out just because there are a few bumps in the road.
Jonah certainly found this out. He was a man that God set apart to be an evangelist to the Gentiles, to a people called the Assyrians (who at the time were an incredibly dangerous threat to the Jews). God called Jonah to go and “preach against them” (Jon 1:1), but instead of going north to Nineveh, Jonah went walkabout to Tarshish (which is essentially Hebrew for “nowhere land”). God sent a storm and Jonah was swallowed by a big fish. It was there at the bottom of the ocean that these awesome lyrics (that would make any country singer blush) were shaped. “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry” (Jon 2:2). Notice that? You can’t get more “valleyish” than that right? Well its from there that this Billy Graham prototype called out to God and it’s from there that he discovered that even though he ran, God was ever present and still in control. We know this as Jonah was not just heard, but answered by our ever present God (Jon 2:2b).
Job too was privy to this side of things. After an incredibly dramatic bout with being on the receiving end of Satan’s sinister plans that came about from a wager with the Creator (Job 1-2), we read how Job wagged his finger in every which direction searching for some meaning to it all. With his “friends like these, who needs enemies” at his side throwing fuel on the fire, God actually descends (some might say condescends) down to the level of mere men to answer Job, poetically saying, “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?” (Job 38:16-17). In other words, God doesn’t just know or comprehend what is in the deepest valleys (literally in this case), but created them (Job 38:28-30). All this to say, there is nothing and no place where creation can hide from its creator and Job was answered by our ever caring God from the proverbial ditch (Job 42:10-17).
King David also discovered God at the bottom of the cesspool, which he had dived into head first. David sinned in incredible ways (1 Sam 11-12, Ps 38, 51) and like Jonah who physically felt that sinking feeling, David experienced it emotionally. Yet even in the very depths of despair, which he bought front row tickets to, God not only heard him but restored David and he knew it, later writing, “If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there…even in darkness I cannot hide from you” (Ps 139:8,12. NLT). Even at the bottom of the barrel, David was restored by our merciful God. Maybe like Jonah you knew better but ran. Maybe like Job things have been hard and you’ve bitterly complained. Maybe like David you were tempted and you gave in, I don’t know, but what I do know is that Jesus, once He is called upon, once He gets in the so-called car, you’re never in this journey alone, Jesus never steps away (Heb 13:5). So whatever situation you find yourself in, wherever you might be today, seek and you will find, knock and you will be answered by our ever present, ever caring, ever merciful God (Ps 34:4, Mt 7:7).