Not all who wander are lost…

Latest reading has me journeying with Moses and about a million other people in the desert.  It is a pretty intense story of God’s faithfulness to a group of people He picked to be “His people.” 

They are slaves; He influences a major world-leader to let them go. 

They are chased as they leave; He wipes out a whole army as part of their rescue. 

They are hungry in their journey; He rains down bread from the sky. 

They are thirsty; He causes water to spring from a rock. 

 

God is fully for His people.  It is so easy for us to get distracted from this fact, and begin to believe that we are alone.  We have a short attention span, and forget that we are cared for, provided for, and placed in communities with people we can relate to. 

 

It is funny to me when I read this story about Moses, because at the moments when God is telling Moses all the details of His involvement with the people, the people are looking for a new God.  The LORD is giving details to Moses, to help the people remain in relationship with their creator.  The people are giving gold to Aaron to create a new god so they have someone to attribute affection and complaints when good and bad occur.

 

How quickly we forget the good of our lives!  How easily we wander from the things we know to be true, because we don’t feel like they are true today.  The people knew and experienced the truth of God’s presence and care for them, but it was easy for them to forget what they had already experienced.  In the same way, I have noticed it is easy for me, and all those that I know, to experience the hand of God, living and active in their life, but then forget that He is with us and at work around us.  When we feel God with us, our life feels like a journey towards our eternity…towards purpose and importance.  When we feel like God is not around, we allow a journey to become a wandering through a desert.

 

Sometimes in can feel that we have moved from a journey to wandering.  It can seem as though we have no direction, no guidance, and that perhaps the voice of God is no longer around.  Everyone goes through these times; it is a basic part of the human experience.  We must somehow remember that not all who wander are lost.  God does not cease to be real, personal and active just because our life seems to have become a wander, instead of a journey. 

 

Though I still have reading to do, I know that the next part of the story for Moses and the people with him is an experience of wandering in the desert for many years.  It would make complete sense to think that God just left them and was no longer a part of their lives.  I bet they even felt like that, spending day after day just trying to figure out “what next?”  What is true is that the wandering was very important for them.  They were never lost in the desert, though God did allow them to wander.  There was purpose in the wander, and there is purpose in ours.