One word picture from the Psalms has stuck in my memory. It is illustrated in a biography of a religious man who searched Israel for his son who had vanished on a personal quest in the uplands of Canaan. Having an erroneous idea of the topography of Israel, he set out ill-prepared for the rugged landscape. Fertile plains gave way to plateaus carved by deep wadis where one can easily work their way down into riverbeds with no water and no sense of direction. Not only had his son died lost down in wadi but he also became disorientated in the wadis and almost perished.
‘Lead me to the rock that is higher than I’ is David’s plea of the Lᴏʀᴅ to give him God’s orientation in the wadis of Life. While David could have experienced the geographic wadis both as a shepherd and as the leader of troops, this application is part of looking to God as the Rock that is higher than the circumstances of his experience. Yes, getting up out of the wadis necessitated a ‘Rock that is higher than I,’ that vantage point where we once again have God’s perspective rather than the ‘walled-in’ disorientation of the moment’s events.
David counted on God to bring forth the refreshing he needed in the dryness of Life, to restore his soul, to then lead him on. And God can do that with you as well. If you allow Him to lead beyond your view.