Midnight Quills

So, now comes the final part of the journey.

Well, actually, the journey’s pretty much over. Deuteronomy is Moses stepping up in front of everyone and retelling the story of what happened – at least, a lot of the interesting bits. I wonder – remind me at the end of this book to return to the thought as to whether you could just read Deuteronomy, and then skip Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, because this one has all the important bits anyway.

Chapter one is long, at least in comparison to most of the chapters I’ve read so far, and actually has a lot in it. There are a couple of verses, that I want to draw back into. They don’t really link or relate directly to one another, but they’re just the ones that stood out to me.

1. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” ~ Deuteronomy 1:30-31

Like a father carries his son.

You know, the picture I get here is one that continues from that moment. I have this mental image of God, as a father, carrying his child through the journey that Israel was going through. He wants to help them get from the beginning to end, and he wants to make it as easy for them as possible; so he carries them. The problem is, that the child doesn’t want to be helped, doesn’t want to be carried, and so keeps kicking and swinging and trying to get out until the father eventually has no real choice but to put the child down.

One of my all time favourite poems is the Footprints poem; again, a reference is in there to Jesus carrying us through the difficult times in our lives.

I’d like to ask, though, how often do we kick and scream and wriggle and writhe? When God’s trying to help us, trying to carry us through something, how much do we just refuse that help? Is it pride that keeps us from accepting his assistance?

I think we tend to have a bit of the wrong attitude to God and his assistance these days. We have a tendency to want to do everything on our own, and it’s not until it all collapses around us that we then turn back and face him – usually asking why he didn’t help. To which he can only respond that we didn’t really allow him to do so.

God is, though, a father – he does want to help us and does want to assist us. That’s not to say that he’s going to do it all for us; but he’s right there giving us guidance and directions – all we have to do is listen to him.

I’m going to drift off on that one instead of going to the other points I had in mind. Didn’t expect to go on for so long.