The Transformation of "Much Afraid"

Hurnard's allegory frequently mentions falls, leading me to share this late 1980s

family photo showing falls at Rainy Lake in Washington's North Cascades.

My children  (pictured with their dad) are adults and parents of their own children.

How would you like to be named “Much-Afraid” and feel stuck in your negative life? So starts one of the lesser-known Christian allegories titled, Hinds’ Feet in High Places.  I recently re-read my copy of the 1955 work by Hannah Hurnard, who spent most of her life in missionary work in the Holy Land. Hinds' Feet is counter-cultural to a world that promotes the idea of “upward mobility" in social class, wealth and status. Instead, like another recently revived Christian novel (What Would Jesus Do?—remember WWJD?), it promotes “downward nobility,” moving “down” to the high example of Christ’s servanthood.

Hurnard’s book title comes from the concluding verses of the Old Testament “minor prophet” Habakkuk, who lived in perilous times as his nation fell apart:

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer [hind].  He enables me to go on the heights. (3:19)

Like John Bunyan’s allegory “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Hinds’ Feet is a journey metaphor. The main character is an orphan from the “Family of Fearlings” named “Much Afraid,” who had crooked feet (probably “clubbed” in today’s terms) and a disfigured face with a “crooked mouth.” She was being raised by her aunt, “Mrs. Dismal Forebodings,” along with her two cousins, sisters “Gloomy” and “Spiteful” and their brother “Craven Fear,” a bully. But she yearns to be near the kind “Chief Shepherd” (Jesus) of the nearby mountain. When faced with an arranged marriage to “Craven Fear,” she flees the dark and gloomy hamlet of “Much-Trembling” in search of the Shepherd. During her long and treacherous climb to “spiritual high places,” constantly taunted by evil faces of her old life in the valley, she learns deepening trust in the Shepherd.  Finally, she is healed and her name changed to “Grace and Glory.”

The names given places and characters lend deep symbolism to this classic book. They also reflect Hurnard’s personal story. She once stammered and had many fears, and described her “old self” as “a miserable, morbid, self-centered person who never felt love for anyone, shut up to my own torment.” But Hurnard’s spiritual life was transformed after attending the evangelistic “Keswick convention” meetings of her times. She became a missionary and an author, leaving a legacy of hope and trust that rose above her old pain and fear.

Talk about coincidence: As I finished

writing this blog in April, I looked

at my desk-side calendar and realized

its photo was a breathtaking falls

Much of her inspiration for this allegory came from her trips to the mountains of Switzerland, where she especially reveled in the thundering, dizzying mountain waterfalls. Through such splendid scenes, she said, God taught her that “love’s eternal, ecstatic joy [comes in] ceaseless, blissful giving.” For her, these alpine falls symbolized how Christians share the ever-flowing love of God:

1. Humility: “The pouring of oneself down lower and lower in self-effacement and self-denial.”

2. Giving: “The poured out life gives life and power to others.  The more love gives, the more it fulfills itself,”

3. Service: The water plunging over falls eventually nourishes crops or is turned into electricity. Similarly, true Christian love is “utterly abandoned to the goal of giving oneself to others.” *

Or, as the apostle Peter said, quoting Proverbs 3:34: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5).

Have any of you who visit this column read Hinds Feet on High Places? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

*Hannah Hurnard, Hinds’ Feet On High Places (Wheaton: Tyndale/Living Books, 1975), p.259.

Glamour in the pen

Whee—pink leopard fashion shirt!  I couldn’t help but stop and smile when I passed by this goat at our local county fair.  I’m presuming this pet-cover helped keep a just-washed animal cleaner for imminent judging. But the animal’s woebegone attitude triggered my imagination. If animals could talk “human-talk,” I wonder what this one would have said. Maybe something of the animal version of: “I’d rather be in jeans with bleach holes.”J

Smiles aside, our culture’s move toward clothing for pets (such as Halloween costumes for Fifi and Fido, usually on 90% off clearance by January) lands in my “that’s incredible” file.  I’ll admit that our ancient cat (now 17 or 18 years old—he was a rescue cat) in earlier years suffered the indignity of being garbed with Cabbage Patch doll clothes.  Alas, he was so portly that they were a poor fit, and as soon as he could, he escaped from his modeling career to the great outdoors where he could freely wear his one-and-only fur coat.

Do clothes make the person?  The fashion world would have us believe that.  But another type of clothing--the inside-type--does communicate a lot about us to people around us. 

The apostle Paul wrote that God’s chosen people—“holy and dearly loved”—should have these clothing choices: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and the ability to bear with others and forgive each other.  Finally, like a coat over all, “put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:14).

Peter had a similar clothes shopping list: “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (1 Peter 5:5, part of it quoting Proverbs 3:34).

Paul wrote the Romans, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14).  Simple and basic.   But how profound!

Did you catch something about the “clothes” mentioned in those passages?  They’re about heart-conditions that undergo the wear-and-tear of relationships.  How the world sees “Christian-dress” has a lot to do with how we treat people.  No Christian-wear is flimsy. It needs to stand up to a lot of people-and-trials-wear-and-tear. But remember: the label says, “Inspected by John 3:16.”

Fashion Flub

Always ready for a bargain, I decided I’d go along with my local grocer’s 10%-off everything offer. It involved promoting the state’s professional football team, the Seahawks.  If a customer wore a Seahawk jersey to shop on a Seahawk game day, he’d get that 10% discount. Remembering my husband had a blue Seahawk sweatshirt, I pulled the familiar color off a hanger in his closet and hurried out the door with my shopping list in hand. After filling my basket, I showed up at checkout and said,  “I wore a Seahawk shirt to get today’s special discount.”

The clerk glanced at me and muttered, “A Seahawk jersey.”  “Oh,” I replied, concluding that sweatshirts didn’t come under their “jersey” rule. I didn’t pursue the conversation as there were many customers behind me.  When I got home and took off the sweatshirt, I realized I’d put on another of his sweatshirts, same blue, but this mischievous, old-age message: “I don’t want to, I don’t have to, you can’t make me, I’m retired.”

My blunder has caused gales of laughter among family and friends. Somebody said, “You’ll figure out a blog from that.” Well, I did think of a few things.

*Our clothing can be a billboard of our values.  I’ve seen too many that are offensive beyond words. They’re good for the gutter, and no more.  I’m reminded of a story told of the 19^th century Russsian priest, Father John of Kronstadt. Unlike other clergy of his times, he purposefully went into the impoverished villages near his cathedral to interact with the people.  In the slums, he’d get down in the gutters where drunks were sleeping off their hangovers. He’d cup the man’s chin, look in his eyes and say, “This is beneath your dignity. You were created to house the fullness of God.”  Some of today’s clothing offerings are clearly beneath the dignity of a child of God.

*Our clothing is not all that should clothe us:

“Clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” –Paul, Romans 13:14
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion,kindness, humility, gentleness and patience...Bear with each other...forgive...over all these virtues put on love.” –Paul, Colossians 3:12-14.
“Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” –Peter, 1 Peter 5:5
 

That’s the way it should be for those who wear the garments of salvation (Isaiah 61:10)!