Traveling

"Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.’  Deut. 2:7

Forty years. The Israelites traveled for 40 years after their Exodus from Egypt. In the past, as I would talk about their time in the wilderness, it was a fact, a number.  In pondering their journey this morning, it strikes me differently.  How did they live with moving between one land and another for so long?  How did they keep going?  How did they not become discouraged and quit?

I cannot imagine forty years in a wilderness journey. I am boggled by the thought of  a year, or five years, or twenty years, or thirty-five years of an unknown future.  And yet the Israelites' journey feels very familiar. Day after day of facing uncertainty, of dealing with the same challenges of the desert, of making the best efforts to keep moving forward...it is an exhausting journey that I never used to contemplate.

There are similarities in the journey, and also similarities in the care that God has given.  Through our journeys, God is with us.  On the long, dusty trails that seem to make no sense....when we're gathering our strength to just keep going,  God is still with us.  We do not journey on this alone. God travels with us, and has brought us together with others who travel this journey. 

What keeps you going?  What keeps you moving along this sometime difficult and dusty road? 

Remember that you are not traveling alone. The Lord your God is with you, and so are those of us who also travel in this journey.

Lord God, as we ponder this chronic health wilderness, we see the journey of the Israelites. Help us to learn from them, and encourage us in our faith so we may find strength for the journey. Amen.