Living in the Valley

Good words from my friend and blogger, Ted Gossard:
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While going over the psalms slowly, it has struck me just how often the psalmists lives in the valley so to speak, and rarely on a mountain. In other words life for the psalmist was often hard, difficult, even well nigh impossible on a number of levels. This made them all the more aware of their need for God and for God’s salvation.

I think we in Jesus ought to be living more and more in God's peace and overlfowing joy, but I think that's rarely a kind of mountaintop experience, free from trouble. Such times are surely good here and there, especially helpful after seasons of great difficulty. But by and large that's not where we live, not the real world, in which trouble and trials are part of the whole.
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The rest of Ted's must-read post can be found here.