"The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast desert. These forty years the Lord your God has been you, and you have not lacked anything." [Deut. 2:7]
As he ends closes his moment in history as the leader of Israel, Moses speaks to the people.
Perhaps, I need to rethink the wandering in the wilderness as punishment.
Yes, they wandered because they didn't have enough faith to believe God would fight their battles for them as they entered the Promised Land. But maybe this punishment was really opportunity. The chance to see God.
What we believe to be punishment God really means as blessing for His people. God can make all things good just as Satan can and does make good things bad. As I look at it now, the wandering was a time to see God caring for them in such intimate ways. Is there a more intimate portrait of the Lord than this:
"The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as He did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son all the way you went until you reached this place." [Deut. 1:30-31]
How poetic and intimate a picture. Just think of it - God carrying us like a father carries a small child on his shoulder. I can't help but remember the time my Grandpa Eddy took me home in the middle of the night because I was so homesick. I feel asleep before we got there - finally at ease and still in the knowledge he was taking me home - and he carried my body, unaware, to the door of my parent's trailer house. I didn't even know it when it was happening. But my request had been answered.
"What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?" [Deut. 4:7]"...the Lord your God, who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go." [Deut. 1:32-33]
God knows life is all about location and direction, where we are and where we're going. And He takes us there so often unaware or taken for granted.
This reading is a satisfying one to me...except for one thing. Why does Moses blame the people three times for his not being able to enter the Promised Land? Did he truly feel it was their complaining and whining that caused him to disobey God. Or, in the midst of this beautiful oration, does he show in his final public act that he is as human as the people he sought to lead? None of us are truly worthy to step into Promise.
But the Lord provides.
My post last year on this date.
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