Our Aerial Chair

One of the kindest men in this world, my brother, Mark, 1959

“As for God, His way is blameless; the Word of the Lord is tried; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God. The God who girds me with strength and makes my way blameless? He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, and sets me upon my high places.” (Psalm 18:30-33)

            In Hannah Hurnard’s classic, Hinds’ Feet on High Places, Much-Afraid follows a path that finishes its winding way through the valley at the foot of steep, high mountains, rising like a wall. Overhead, on a suspended cable, hung aerial chairs in which two could sit side by side and be swung right up to the summit without any effort on the passenger’s part at all.

            Wouldn’t we all love to have an aerial chair that could take us to our goals and accomplish our life purposes with no struggling or striving on our part? Actually, for those of us in relationship with Father God, Jesus Christ yearns to be our aerial chair.

            Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine, and you are the branches; he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”  In his book A Love Worth Giving, Max Lucado makes the point that a branch doesn’t have to exert a lot of energy to bear fruit. The branch has only one job – to receive nourishment from the vine.

            God has plans, strategies, and instructions; we must simply sit in His Presence, listen, trust, and obey the One who is able to make all grace abound to us, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, we may have an abundance for every good deed (2 Cor. 9:8)!

            Sit down with Jesus everyday and enjoy the ride to His high places!

“…the Shepherd smiled and said, ‘Come, Much-Afraid, we will seat ourselves in the first two chairs…All you have to do is to trust yourself to the chair and be carried in perfect safety up to the place which I wish to take you and without any struggling and striving on your part.’”¹

¹Hannah Hurnard, Hind’s Feet on High Places (Tyndale House Publishing, 1975), 168.