Another couple sitting across the desk from me looked at me in a moment of realization of how difficult it would be for them to grow together again. How can they move beyond that pain?

They say the eyes are the window of the soul and I believe that is true in many cases. I have seen a lot of things in the eyes I have looked into, loneliness, fear, anger, hatred, emptiness, but I have also seen hope, peace, softness, melting. The valley of Baka has all of this.

I have seen it in the eyes of my wife Linda even as recently as these weeks. She arrives home tomorrow night from Winnipeg where she has been visiting her mother who is suffering from dementia. A horrible disease that robs a person of themselves. You can watch the person disappear in front of you over a period of weeks and months and years. The thing that is consistent about the valleys we’ve been talking about, is that we will go through all of them. Nobody is spared from them but this is one we wish we were, "Baka!"

The valley of Baka was a desert. It was a dry, dry, dusty, arid, waste land, and if you wanted to go to Jerusalem as a Pilgrim, you had to go through the valley of Baka to get there. This is a metaphor again about when you’re going through a dry time in your life, when your joy has dried up. Maybe you’re grieving. Maybe you’re the one that’s weeping in the valley of weeping. Nothing grows there. Nothing productive. There’s no fruit, just tears.

"Blessed are those whose strength comes from the Lord… As they pass through the valley of Baka," That’s the valley of weeping. "They make it a place of springs, and the autumn rains cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, growing until each appears before God in Zion."

- Psalm 84:5-7 (NIV)

It’s dry, "I don’t have any feelings anymore, I don’t feel close to God, to my spouse, to anybody, I’m dried up!" You are going through the valley of weeping! But the kind of person that God wants us to be is; we make the dry places a place of springs. Water comes when we show up! They go from strength to strength. That’s what God wants you to do your entire life, go from one level of maturity to the next level of maturity and the next level of maturity. Our tears mixed with faith brings springs to the drylands, and what we become through that is what we take to heaven with us.

Question: This is a question you will be asked by God. "Did you grow from strength to strength when you were on earth?"

Meditation: Are my tears in the valley of Baka disappearing into the sand, or by faith creating pools in the desert?