Daily Devotions
God Carries You
Reading for February 21st: Deuteronomy 1-2
...you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.
Deuteronomy 1:31
I've shared how my parents used to take me and my brother and sister on long vacations in the summer. Dad would save up vacation days and take off a month sometimes to drive us out west as far as California or up north as far as Canada and many other places in between.
Now that I'm a parent I appreciate the sacrifice this was for my parents, and not just financial, but the emotional stress and physical exertion that was involved. We didn't have DVDs to watch or video games to play in the car. Whenever we got tired or bored my parents had to deal with the wrath of three tired, hungry, and testy children.
Let's face it, when you've got 3.5 weeks, 10+ states and 1000+ miles on your body and mind, you will have some major melt downs. Everyone is drained. I can still see my father carrying my younger brother on his shoulder in the late afternoon of a long day because he just couldn't stay awake.
Of course, you can't compare forty years of wandering in the wilderness with a four week road trip, but it gives us a sense of what God had to put up with when he guided the children of Israel through a barren wilderness where he had to put up with a tired, hungry, and grumbly people.
And God's patience with the children of Israel should give us hope.
Thank you, Father, for picking us up when we fall and carrying us when we are too weary to go anymore.
