AP

Exodus 13:17-18  When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter.  For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.”  So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.  The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for battle.

I find the message of these verses quite comforting.  They remind me of an aspect of God’s character that helps me as I struggle with outworkings of his Providence that I find difficult to understand.

The large group of God’s Covenant People who had been redeemed by his ‘mighty hand’ from Egypt was beginning a long and arduous journey to the Land that had been promised to their ancestors half a millennium earlier.  They were well aware of the fact that they were going to face opposition – they were ‘ready for battle’ – but they didn’t know they would be wandering in a vast, uninviting wilderness/desert for forty years before they reached their destination!

And Moses gives us a little reminder here that it was their God who was leading them – the same God who had so miraculously rescued them from harsh slavery.  Nor was this God going to take them by the shortest route because in his omniscent sovereignty he knew  that a longer route would, in the end, actually be better for them.  This ‘better’ path was going to require them to trust his omnipotence when they came to the ‘uncrossable’ Red Sea with the Egyptian army hot on their heels.  It was going to require them to keep in trusting his omnipotence on a day-to-day basis to sustain them miraculously with food and water, something they were going to get quite grumbly and rebellious about.

So it is helpful for me to be reminded of these things when unplanned things happen in my life that might cause me to question God’s Providence, when I find myself asking him questions that begin with ‘Why … …?’.  Moses reminds me here that God knows much better than I do what is best for me on my pilgrimage to my Heavenly Home, even if I not only can’t understand, but I find his plan quite confusing from a logical point of view (my ‘logic’ that is!).

“He loves, he cares, he knows.  His love, though never dim, can only give the best to those who leave the choice with him” (anon).  “I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know who holds the future!” (anon).  “I died to sin upon the cross, I’m bound to Jesus in his death;  the old is gone and now I must rely on him for every breath.  With every footstep that I tread what mysteries he has in store, I cannot know what lies ahead but know that he has gone before.” (Michael Morrow).

– Bruce Christian