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11 Days

11 days. The journey should have taken 11 days. Instead, they wandered for 40 years. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. God promised them a better life if they followed Moses into the wilderness; a desert journey to a new land flowing with milk and honey full of promise. A journey that should have lasted 11 days turned into 40 years. Why? Because they took their eyes off of God.

"For the LORD your God has blessed you in all that you have done; He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing." Deuteronomy 2:7

I am currently going through a study that keeps coming back to the Israelites journey through the desert. The focus isn't really about the amount of time they spent in the desert but that's what stood out to me.

How often do I wander far beyond what I need? How many times do get lost because I lose sight of my focus? How much time, energy, and emotion have I wasted in the desert when I could have been in the promise land?

It's easy to look at the Israelites and see where they missed it; where they should have turned leading them to their future and their hope. Instead, they lost their focus and got lost causing them to wander, question, doubt, and suffer far longer than they needed. When you read their story in the Old Testament, you want to scream at them to wake-up just like you would scream at a movie screen when the actor is about to walk right into the villain. But they don't wake-up. Instead, they wander and wander complaining and grumbling not realizing the state of their being isn't because of God but because of themselves.

Ugh. I have been the Israelites. I have wandered the desert far longer than necessary because I didn't trust God. I didn't listen when he told me to trust, to be still, to remember his promises. Instead, I worried, I gave up, I let frustration rule in my soul and was left to wander the wilderness lost, tired, and thirsty for something better.

I love Deuteronomy 2:7. I love it because God proclaims that he was with them even in their wandering. He never left them even though they took the path off the trail that all the signs warned about. When they complained crying out that slavery in Egypt was better than their journey through the desert, God stayed. When they decided to worship other Gods, God was still there. When they were hungry, tired, and defeated, he was near. He never left. They just couldn't see him.

I have been there. I have wandered, questioned, doubted, worshipped other things, and tried to take matters into my own hands thinking I was abandoned. But, I was never alone. He was always near.

Sometimes God lets us wander the desert because we need it. We need to be stripped bare to realize he is near. We need to be lost to realize we need a guide. We need everything to seem hopeless so he can be our hope. We need to wander the wilderness so we can find him.

However, our wilderness journey can be 11 days or 40. It's our choice. Do we choose to pitch a tent and stay awhile in the desert or keeping moving even when it hurts? We will all face the desert. We will all go through seasons of parched land. That we cannot escape. What we can do, however, is determine how long we are going to stay lost.

God will never leave us even when we are wandering. The question is, we will see him in the desert?

Love & Blessings,
Meg

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