Better Than Just Getting Through
“In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
– Exodus 16:2-3
I have longingly looked back at all we have lost during this pandemic, have you? I miss people. I miss the hugs, the gatherings, the shared meals in our favorite restaurants, the freedom of going where we want, getting close enough to see people’s eyes and every day, having more options of things to do than I could ever get to. I miss being at my church and worshipping together. I’ve heard people say it over and over… I can’t wait til we get back to normal. I can’t wait until things are like they used to be again. I feel that too. But what if… God wants to give us something better? It’s hard to imagine a new thing that we’ve never seen, a place we haven’t been, and a new way of being and living and thinking. The children of Israel tripped up on their journey to the Promised Land because they kept looking back and longing for Egypt. They didn’t have a concept of what it would be like to be free in a land of their own. They were used to being slaves and while they were traveling to this new place they had been promised, they grew weary and their vision for this new life grew fainter.
What if God wants to give us something better than what it used to be? What if He has in mind, something so good, so amazing, so perfect for us and we just have to trust Him? I think it’s absurd to think He doesn’t. He is gracious, He is a giver of all Good gifts to his children, He wants what is not just better- but BEST for us always. For me, getting through this pandemic and this quarantine was all I was thinking about at first. But God has been showing me there is so much more than getting through. We don’t have to go back to the way it was, we can trust Him to take us someplace better. And as He heals our hearts from many sicknesses- like putting our hope in things that can’t ever satisfy and accumulating and storing up riches for ourselves and dividing over things that don’t matter, He takes us to a new promised land- A deeply humbled world that collectively cries out to God, seeks Him together and desires Him more than anything. Moving forward, not going back. The best is yet to come. Do you believe it?
“See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” – Isaiah 43:19
Photo by Javier Collarte on Unsplash
