For various sad reasons, my family has lived in seven different houses over a five-year period. This is a lot of moving house, with all the accompanying uncertainty. We’ve lost money, with significant moving charges and lawyers’ fees, but the biggest cost has been emotional. Some of the moves represented dashed hopes or painful uprootings from places we’d loved. Others were into temporary rented accommodation, where the instability and uncertainty took its toll. In comparison with the world’s refugees, admittedly, we are extremely privileged—we were always sheltered and warm—but even this experience taught us that living in limbo is exhausting.
No wonder the Israelites grumbled about forty years in the desert. However, in Moses’ last speech before they entered the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 1:1), he reminded them of God’s past help in their long wanderings. God had provided for them: “Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during those forty years” (8:4), and God had given them manna to eat (v. 3). Even the hardships had a spiritual purpose: “to humble and test you to know what was in your heart” ( v. 2).
Right now I’m too drained to confidently identify God’s good purpose and provision for my wanderings, but Deuteronomy 8 helps me trust that in time, I will. If you are in a desert period, I trust this for you, too.
By Tanya Marlow
REFLECT & PRAY
Think of a wilderness time for you, in your past or present. How have you seen God’s provision for you? How have you seen God’s purposes at work?
Dear God, in my wilderness times, help me to see how You are still providing for me. Please show me how You are redeeming this hard period for my good.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Remembering the hunger Israel experienced during their 40 years in the wilderness, Moses told them it was “to do you good in the end” (Deut. 8:16). What good? To “make you know that . . . man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD” (v.3). Some lessons are best learned through trials and understood in perspective.
Arthur Jackson
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