Written by Ruth Chou Simons, a contemporary author. This is an excerpt from her book “Now and Not Yet.”
In the Old Testament, we read of the forty-year journey God’s people, the Israelites, took in the desert due to their disbelief and disobedience even after God led them out of slavery in Egypt. While some deserts are the result of waywardness (like Israel experienced), oftentimes we find ourselves in parched and weary places unexpectedly. For some, it’s the wilderness of a chronic illness, a lifelong battle, or a life circumstance that feels like an endless desert with no oasis. For some, the desert is a spiritually dry place you wish didn’t exist. A barren place that tempts you to doubt and fear. A place that reads only lack and loss instead of freedom and flourishing…Each and every way God met the Israelites in the desert was for the purpose of showing them that they were secure in His care. That they need only to surrender their self-sufficiency and believe God to be who He claimed to be. To trust that He would do what He said He would do and, in response, obey Him because they trusted Him more than they believed in their own ways.
And He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. [Deuteronomy 8:3]
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