Recently one of my morning devotional from Seedbed Daily Text was about God sending Elijah into the Kerith ravine for safety. He drank from the brook and ravens fed him day and night until The brook dried up in the drought and God sent him to the widow of Zarepheth. We were challenged to think about “ravine” times in our lives. The first experience of a ravine for me was as a child, but it didn’t hold danger. Rather it was familiar and fun. Only as I look back now can I see spiritual ravine times where God had me in isolation yet secure. Even those are cherished times because I knew Ge was with me.
When I was a child age 5-9, we lived on a large lot at the edge of town. There was a deep ravine that ran behind our house. It had a small clean stream running through its bottom. It had deep shade from the trees on both edges and down along its interior sides. There were houses across on the other side, too, but getting up that steeper side was more of a challenge. There was no fencing to block access along its length that ran for probably a quarter mile or so. All the neighborhood kids and dogs played there, swinging on vines and ropes from one side of the stream to the other. We used cardboard boxes to slide down the slopes where we could find or make a clearing in the underbrush where the path down was not overly steep. We built forts from fallen limbs. It was our summertime playground, just a short run from my back door where we could get bandaids, and sit on the patio with lemonade or ice tea and a sugar/butter biscuit if we were really lucky. So when I think of a ravine I think of cool summer shade, fun, adventure, and playmates. When I think about it now, I think God must have smiled at our carefree childhood fun in such a place where we were safe within earshot of several moms at nearby homes. Maybe the safety and freedom I felt in the rural communities of my childhood protected me from the feeling of “lostness”. It eventually came in my mid and late teens and in my first year of college. But I ran from it and found solace in marriage, children, and career until my 40s loomed when it came with a fierceness in the broad public exposed places that left me no hiding place but in the Lord’s arms where He has drawn me closer and closer each decade.