So Serious Saturday #24

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Theological/Life Application

In Difficult Places

        "Then all the congregation of the children of Israel set out on their journey from the Wilderness of Sin, according to the commandment of the LORD, and camped in Rephidim; but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people contended with Moses, and said, "Give us water, that we may drink." So Moses said to them, "Why do you contend with me? Why do you tempt the LORD?"  And the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses, and said, "Why is it you have brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?"

                      Exodus 17:1-3

The Holy Bible, NKJV. Thomas Nelson, 1990.

      God commanded the children of Israel to go to a certain place, which turned out to be a desert without  water. God did not lead the people to a place of ease, where water or resources came easy. He led them to a natural place of death, where they and their families and economic livelihood would die without both food and drink.  So why did God lead them to a difficult place?

        God led them with a purpose. We learn through later passages, when the people complained about not having water, that their human leader feared for his life and called out to God. God listened and told Moses to strike a rock. Moses did what God said. Water flowed out and the people had water.

       First God led his chosen people to a place without water, then gave them water. It would seem that God rethought His decision, but God had a purpose for the plight of His people all along.

        The children of Israel had been manual slave labor for Egypt, a nation that had many gods and idols who needed to be provided for. God took the Israelites out to set them apart from other nations, He taught the manual laborers about His provision for their needs. Several times in the book of Exodus the Israelites are short on food or water, but never abandoned by God.

        Water in that wasteland could not be found without His guidance. To live in an unforgiving place the people had to rely on and trust in Him instead of on their own ability or resources.

      Just as with us, the people had to learn a great deal about how God works, with the most important lessons taking place in the harshest settings. And just as then, God wants to have a relationship with every person not because of our human abilities or resources, but often in spite of them. He often works in us through the places beyond every possible natural instinct of self-sufficiency.