The Hooves That Grip the Bare Rock

In Italy's Gran Paradiso National Park, Alpine ibex scale the nearly vertical face of the Cingino Dam — a smooth concrete wall rising 160 feet — just to lick mineral deposits from the surface. Photographers who capture the sight can hardly believe it. These animals, weighing over 200 pounds, cling to surfaces where a single misstep means death. Their secret is in the design of their hooves: a hard outer rim for edge-gripping and a soft, concave center that suctions to stone like a living climbing shoe.

Habakkuk knew a similar defiance of gravity. He surveyed a landscape stripped bare — no figs, no grapes, no olives, no flocks, no herds. Every visible support had vanished. And in that moment of total loss, he didn't collapse. He climbed. "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord," he declared. "The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; He enables me to tread on the heights."

When the economy of your life collapses — when the diagnosis comes, the marriage fractures, the ministry crumbles — God doesn't promise to rebuild the valley floor beneath you. He reshapes your footing. He gives you hooves designed for the cliff face, a grip that holds where nothing else can. The ibex doesn't need a gentle slope. And the believer who trusts El Shaddai doesn't need circumstances to cooperate. The heights are accessible precisely because the Almighty has changed how you stand.