«THE VALLEY OF WEEPING, THEY MAKE IT A SPRING»
«As they pass through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a spring; the rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion» Psalm 84:6, 7.
REFERRING TO PSALM 84, the famous preacher, Bible scholar, and writer Charles H. Spurgeon said, «If the twenty-third be the most popular, the one-hundred and-third the most joyful, the one-hundred-and-nineteenth the most deeply experimental, the fifty-first the most plaintive, this is one of the most sweet of the Psalms of peace.»* One of the passages from that psalm that most deeply resonates with me is this: «As they pass through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a spring; the rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion» (verses 6, 7). This is the psalm of a pilgrim, a believer who leaves his city to go to Jerusalem to worship God. However, instead of describing the exterior physical scenery of his travels, the psalmist describes his journey from an internal spiritual perspective.
He describes his heart, his flesh, his soul. He is far from Jerusalem, but feels God’s closeness. He walks with longing expectation, he feels like the sparrow in its nest, he is a little child running toward his loving father’s arms. And what happens when believers start out on that journey back to their heavenly Father? The psalmist says they have to go through «the valley of weeping.» The King James Version transliterated the Hebrew text and wrote «the Valley of Baca.» The problem is that there is no valley called Baca around Jerusalem. In our text, the Hebrew word «Baca» is a metaphor to refer to a «dry valley» or «valley of death,» as Psalm 23:4 says. What Psalm 84 seems to be saying is that «when people who are moved by longing for God enter regions of death, they transform these wildernesses into paradisiacal oases in which the water of life flows forth
We transform the Valley of Baca, that is, the valley of weeping and death, into a wellspring of life. Even if we have to go through desolate paths in our journey toward God, our good Lord has promised that those very paths will be paths of life and salvation. Your tears will turn into an oasis; your illness will give way to a healthy, fulfilling life; your valley of weeping will become a valley of resurrection; your weakness will give way to power. And best of all: in the end, you will see «God in Zion.»
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Taken from: Devotional Readings for Adults 2023
“I AM WITH YOU”
From: J. VLADIMIR POLANCO
Collaborators: Lorina Maya & Avineyda Hernández