I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. You have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the LORD your God.God did what no man could have done, in sustaining the Israelites for forty years in the wilderness. He did this miraculously, so that no one could boast except in the LORD their God. Starting out, they could not have made plans like this, "OK, so for the next forty years let's just make sure our clothes and shoes don't wear out, let's not plan to eat any bread or drink what seems like the most logical travel drink. Let's set a course to do this for forty years and I'm sure we can make it happen." This would hardly be the wisdom of man, and absolutely is out of the reach and power of man to perform. But God did it. God called them to it, to obedience, faith, joyful surrender to his will, and to enjoyment and praise of him alone through it all.
When I look at what he did for them, how can I doubt what he can and will do in my own life? It is a blessing to be positioned in a place that forces you to all the more quickly acknowledge your absolute dependence on God - his wisdom, his power, his guidance, his strength, his grace.
The Israelites didn't know what was ahead of them in those forty years when they started out, and they sure did mess up. But God was faithful to them in spite of their sin, absurdly undeserving as they were. And he called them to just one day at a time (manna for only one day). I want to be more faithful to simply look at the clear calling for the "one day" that God has put before me.
photo: some of my camping staffers at Creation West 2006
at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA
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