Mustard Seeds in the Valley of Death

“You look different,” she said to me. We had just finished singing and I was looking into the face of my friend and smiling like an idiot, unable to stop. I have watched the Lord grow this girl into a completely different person over the last couple of years. A woman full of life and freedom. I was jealous for that same transformation, but I thought surely it would never happen for me. It’s the lie I let the enemy tell me about everything.

Yet the Lord is doing that work in me now.

Faith like a mustard seed. By now you must have heard the fact that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds, yet a huge tree grows from it. I’ve heard that so many times, the reality of it has lost all potency. It’s nothing more than a piece of the pie in Trivial Pursuit. But faith like a mustard seed is what he asks us to have.

When the Lord asked me to step out in faith, I begged him for any other alternative than the option he put before me. But he kept gently and persistently asking me to give up the very thing I loved and to trust Him with the outcome. It was a step of obedience, although that feels a little misleading to say when I feel like it was the Lord himself who picked up my feet for me and moved them forward. It was him who supported my trembling hands as I laid my sacrifice on his alter and anointed it with my tears. I wanted to follow him, but I had not the strength to take that step on my own.

Strength like a mustard seed, then, and joy less than one. In Isaiah he promises not to break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick, but I’ll confess I felt that the reed was already rotted and the wick had gone cold. I had believed resolutely that he would follow through, I just didn’t know if I had enough left in me to make it that far. The step he asked me to take led directly down into the valley of death, and I knew that he’d have to carry me if we were going to make it to the other side.

That valley was dark and cloudy. The storm had long since knocked the wind out of me and my eyes were still stinging from the rain. All I saw was dim desolation, not a single green thing in all that space. But still we kept descending.

I walked willingly into my own grave, and cried out for resurrection, though I knew not what that meant or when it would come. I lay down in the murky terroir and with the last of my mustard seed strength, I begged him to show me his face.

With that, I was done. I had nothing left to give. These weren’t Ezekiel’s dry bones in the desert, these were withered, muddy, broken things. I didn’t know how I would ever make it out of that grave. I believed he would do it, but I settled in for the long road, knowing that healing is slow, and that transformation takes time. If a year is like a day and a day like a year to the Lord, then three days must feel like a lifetime for me, but I would wait until they passed. Hopefully one day he would raise me to life, perhaps in this age, and if not, he certainly would in the next. And that is what I expected, to wait until the coming of the Kingdom in full to experience the kind of life he promised. That in itself is Just, I thought, knowing the ways we treason against him daily. I was content to wait in anguish for that.

But something else happened. He knelt down in that wet dirt and sang over me a song of new life. He didn’t rush me, but simply sang until his breath breathed fire back into my wasted body and set me aflame with his Spirit. Suddenly I could see him, and suddenly I was resurrected. Healing rained down, my strength was restored, and something I didn’t expect - he gave me new sight. Light rushed into the valley and banished every shadow.

Suddenly the world was alive in technicolor and everything praised the name of the King. Mountains cried out, wildflowers bloomed in the valley, streams rushed forth beside me. The mouth of my empty grave, my own mouth matching it, stood open and shouting the praises of our Resurrector.

“You look different,” She said to me, and it was true. I looked in the mirror myself and a new face stared back at me. It is Joy and Freedom looking back at me, the two gifts I never thought I’d receive on this side of glory. I think of Stephen as he was speaking to the council, how his face shone like the face of an angel. I do not pretend to have that same level of sight, but I think I understand how beholding our Beloved changes our face and our very soul to shine with delight

The Lord took my meager sacrifice of obedience and multiplied it a thousand-fold into something more beautiful and powerful than I could ever have imagined. But that’s what he does, isn’t it? He takes our meager gifts, and he makes them into displays of his glory. And what’s more astounding, he takes that glory and places it inside our weak frames to be living embers of his grace in this waking world. Vessels of glory, carriers of light, sons and daughters of the King of Kings, awaiting his return and telling of his goodness. Valley and vale have no power over his heirs. Death and darkness have not defeated his testimonies. The cold reach of despair flees in fear at the sight of his face.

When his light hit my grave, I could no longer tell the difference between mountain and lowland. It’s just all part of his breathtaking view, and one we get to behold with him at our side. He lifts us to the high places, or he turns the very low places in which we stand into mountaintops of his grace.