Last year, I read an interesting book about the peculiar life of Christopher Thomas Knight. In 1986, at the age of 20, he drove his recently-purchased Subaru from his home in Massachusetts to the edge of the Maine woods, left his keys on the console and walked into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another person for 27 years. A total recluse, Knight cut himself off from human contact, constructed a rudimentary shelter and survived by stealing from nearby cabins; over time, he would come to be known as the North Pond Hermit. He escaped detection by refusing to build fires; he survived the brutal Maine winters by waking at regular intervals during the night and walking the perimeter of his camp to keep from freezing. The story is interesting on its own merit, but I found it especially curious as Knight and I are roughly the same age, only months apart. His timeline approximates mine fairly closely, yet our stories could hardly be more different. During all those years that he spent in isolation, I can mark significant life events that were shared with people that I love — our wedding, the births of our children, cross-country moves, trips, the formation of friendships, the purchase and sale of homes, birthday parties, gardens planted and harvested, football games, etc. Not all that I experienced was pleasant. I lost friends. Deaths occurred. I grappled with dark seasons. But over those same years, Knight – my peer – managed alone in a ghastly kind of self-imposed isolation, rising in the early hours to pace his dreadful little rectangular circuit as means of staying warm. During that same time period, I had good days and bad days. Surely, he did as well. Yet I’m sure that his bad days were worse than mine and his good days were less good. He was alone. I was not.
In the fourth verse of Psalm 23, David bases his confidence during the valley season in his certainty that he is not alone.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me
There is no suggestion in this psalm that the flock is spared hardship. Rather, they are kept through the difficulty and comforted by the presence of God. Very often, I hear friends bear testimony to this experience – how they were sustained through painful experiences by their awareness of the presence of God. There is, I’m sure you know, pain that is so deep that only that (the presence of a faithful shepherd) can steady you. Friends are not enough. Money is no comfort. Distractions fail. Achievement is pointless. Humor only compounds the sorrow. In those moments, only the presence of God can still your anxious thoughts. So great was David’s confidence, that he could hold a steady gait through fearsome valley of the shadow of death. He doesn’t sprint. He doesn’t scurry. He doesn’t trot. He walks. He walks through the valley of the shadow of death, fearing nothing dreadful. God is with him.
I wonder how certain you are of God’s steady presence in your life. Do you know that he is with you now? In this moment, he is near. He will not leave you – even for a moment. If you don’t share a home with others, but live alone, he is with you. If you outlive your contemporaries, you aren’t ultimately alone. God is with you. If you end the day in sorrow or awake with night terrors, he is with you. You needn’t dash through the valley like a frightened child. You can walk. God is near.
Another psalm [46] puts it this way, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble [not just present, very present]. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress”.
Dear ones, you can wrap yourself up in that sure and certain hope. There is no place that you can go where God is not (and wherever God is, everything’s OK). Elsewhere [139], our psalmist engaged Christopher Thomas Knight’s thought experiment – where might you go to be alone? The deep woods? If you drive to the edge of the forest and walk in, God is there. If you made your home among the boulders of coastal Maine and retreated from community, God is there. If you committed to the cloistered life of a hermit, you are not alone. If you went further and endeavored to make your home in the heavens, far from terra firma, God is there. If you were able to breach the realm of the dead, making your bed in Sheol, God is there. If you found a way to inhabit the seas, adrift on the remotest corners of our vast planet – even in the uttermost parts of the sea – you are not alone. God is there. And if you turn the lights out, certain that the night will cover you, God’s still there, he still sees and he will care for you. You have no reason to fear. There is simply no place that you can go – even the valley of the shadow of death – where God is not — and wherever God is, everything’s OK.
So, walk. Just walk. God is present; you needn’t be afraid.