Saturday, August 23, 2008

A Festival in the Desert?

In light of my last post (which I think concerned my husband when he read it), I must say that I just read a blog post from "97secondwithgod" (one of my favorite blogs) concerning a season in the desert. Encouraging....

I didn't make it passed the first verse of this chapter without getting stopped. Here is an excerpt of what Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh:

This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.'

Isn't it interesting that the first thing God wanted His people to do was go into the desert to hold a festival for Him? I mean the desert isn't typically known as the best place to hold a festival. It's hot. It's desperately barren. It's the kind of place where people die if they get lost. So why did God want to hold a festival there?

I think it's because there aren't any distractions in the desert. It's quiet. It's empty. It's the kind of place where you can be still enough to actually hear God.

Sometimes, in our own lives, we find ourselves in the same place. We're alone and empty feeling and desperate. We're in the desert. And it's tempting to run. To see the desert as a bad place. As a place to flee from as fast as we can.

But maybe God wants us there for a reason. Maybe we're exactly where we need to be. Maybe God brought us there for a festival.


So...more news from the desert later as I keep an eye out for this upcoming festival.....


2 comments:

Angela said...

I've got my eyes PEELED!!! :)

I had this thought: When things are going great, it's easy to confuse the Voice of the Lord, I think, with the all the good "things" that we have going on. But when you're in the desert, you have no good things to distract you!!! And God is the only Good Thing that can satisfy. His voice becomes so much clearer.

I just thought of another paradoxical verse about being in the desert:

Hosea 2:14 (Amp)
Therefore, behold, I will allure her [Israel] and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak tenderly and to her heart.

Amy said...

That's REALLY good. The desert is like a vacuum. Definitely easier to hear----now if only there were a sound of some sort!