The Valley of Vision (1)

For the past few years I have used a book of prayers titled, The Valley of Vision, in my communion with God. This is a compilation of prayers authored by several people (all of whom went to be with our Lord many years ago), assembled and edited by Arthur Bennett and published by Banner of Truth Trust. As with many books, including prayer books, there are some passages that I cannot pray because to do so would be to violate my understanding of the Gospel in terms of where I am in Christ today. This does not mean there is anything “wrong” with those passages, for they are passages that we’ve all needed to pray at one time or another.

When I hear people disparage the use of “written prayers”, as if using written prayers is less spiritual or real than extemporaneous prayer, I wonder if they realize that the longest book of the Bible, right in the middle of our Bibles, is the Psalms. I have also found it helpful over the years to write my own prayers, I wish I did this more often because it never fails to help me “see” how the Holy Spirit is prompting and directing my soul in prayer and intercession.

Bennett begins the book with an introductory prayer that he composed titled, The Valley of Vision. The term, the valley of vision, comes from Isaiah 22:1 and 5; “The oracle concerning the valley of vision…For the Lord Yahweh of hosts has a day of panic, subjugation and confusion in the valley of vision…”

Bennett’s prayer is a prayer of paradox; “Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly…the valley of vision where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights…let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart…that to have nothing is to possess all…”

This reminds me of Jeremiah Denton’s “God writes straight with crooked lines”. As God says in Isaiah, “My ways are not your ways”

We are not keen to “learn by paradox”, to see by paradox, to think by paradox, to live by paradox. Solomon begins the book of Proverbs by desiring to know “wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding, to receive instruction in wise behavior…to increase in learning…acquire wise counsel, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.”

Paul’s letter of 2 Corinthians has a motif of suffering, of “having the sentence of death” and “despairing even of life”; and yet it also has “this treasure in jars of clay”, “my strength is made perfect in weakness”. It is in 2 Corinthians that Paul writes, “we don’t look at the things that are seen but the things that are unseen.”

We live in a society oriented toward data and information, not one centered on wisdom and understanding. We want a quick fix and not a developed and tested character or way of life. We want prayer to be an email with a quick response – otherwise we’ll move on to something else.

We think that it is on a mountain that we’ll see things clearly, and yet, more often than not, God calls us into “a valley of vision”.

Bennet concludes his introductory prayer with:

“Let me find thy light in my darkness, thy life in my death, thy joy in my sorrow, thy grace in my sin, thy riches in my poverty, thy glory in my valley.”

How is our Father speaking to you through paradox, enigma, and mystery? Through uncertainty? How are you communing with the Trinity in your own valley of vision?