"See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him."
-Exodus 23:20-21
The Israelites were given freedom. The Lord removed them from a life of slavery and condemnation and led them into the desert to be given a choice to follow Him and His angel in a promised land or to worship other gods and live a life of idolatry and suffering. His covenant with Israel was strong and promising, but the Israelites were frustrated.
Why so many years in a desolate land wandering and waiting for the land promised to them'?
Was there no promise at the end of this road?
Was the blessing not even within grasp?
Why listen to and follow something so unknown?
With lost faith and earthly needs, the Israelites turned and looked towards idols in order to take control back into their hands instead of God's. If they saw an issue within their life, they created a god to "fix" it. They saw their strength being far more superior than the God who brought them out of Egypt.
Is this not us?
As a college student I learning much more each day that the future is so unknown. Where am I going to be two years from now? What will I be doing? What issues will happening in my life then that I should account for now? What can I do today to affect my tomorrow? I'm realizing there's nothing. Nothing, but be present today. You see, I like control. I like knowing what tomorrow or next week will look like. I like to use my own strength and abilities to assure me that I am in control. The Israelites wanted control. They wanted to know that even though they are wandering in the desert that they could create their own perfect, sustainable life now. They wanted all the blessing and all promise right now. Since God wasn't giving it to them now, why not do it themselves? So they used other gods and idols to create control where they felt its absence and no longer a sustainable promise.
I try to use my strength to make my own promises for my future. If I can control my day and life why do I need a God to make these distant promises?
Because my own strength fails.
When we surrender our control and all our preconceived ideas of what our promise should look like, there is nothing left but God. By moving the Israelites from Egypt into a desolate land, God wanted to show them that by trusting in Him, His strength would sustain them. If He could take care of them even in the most severe environments, then He would always be enough. In our most uncertain and scary moments, God wants to show us He can always be trusted and will guide us back into His promise. I create my own strongholds to clutter my life with little idols for this and that, when it could be so simple to just drop my control and let Him lead me. My strength and need for control is excessive and unnecessary because God has a far greater promise and life ahead of me than I could ever create for myself.
"So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of Egyptians and to bring them up out o that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing of milk and honey." -Exodus 3:8
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