One of my all-time favorite comediennes is Gilda Radner, known best for her years as one of the original players on Saturday Night Live. Sadly, Gilda died from ovarian cancer well over 25 years ago, but not before she wrote a book entitled It’s Always Something. Cancer was her “something.” Gilda was not, to my knowledge, a follower of Christ, but she was a very funny Jewish comedienne. The premise of her book is that in life something is always going to go wrong, or there’s always something that we must deal with that’s both challenging and painful to some degree. I think those somethings are the valleys in life in which we find ourselves.
Unlike Gilda, I have walked through some pretty difficult circumstances, and Jesus has been right there with me. Where else would he be, since he is in me? The psalmist David did not have God in him, but he did experience Him with him through all his valleys. There is no way to avoid the valleys, no shortcuts or detours, and often we don’t even know that we’re heading into one until we are already there. Once we become aware that we just entered into a very painful and scary place, we have two choices: 1) we can try to manage on our own, or 2) we can lean into the Lord and trust in his grace to provide for us during our valley visit.
The “shadow of death” is absolutely going to transport us from our comfort zone into a period of uncertainty that can lead us to become anxious and fearful. What we must remember is we are not navigating this place by ourselves. And while the “valley of the shadow of death” is not a fun place to be, it is the place where we come to know God more fully. It’s the place where our head knowledge travels down into the heart, as we experience the truth about God revealed in His Word right in the midst of that valley.
Gilda was right, it’s always something, because we live in a fallen world with broken people, and the evil one will take every opportunity to use our valleys to derail our walk with God. God, on the other hand, uses the valleys to make us more dependent on Him and produce fruit for life in us. If we remember that God is by nature a Redeemer, we can have confidence that the valleys are not something to avoid, but to embrace.