Sometimes humbled is tears. Tears that don’t come quietly, or leave peacefully. The kind that make you hunker down and cover your face.
Lately my husband and I have had many wonderful evenings talking, dreaming, planning together. But as he summed up the years that brought us here, there was an edge of sadness in words that came easily, “We didn’t need to do [this] or have [that].”
“We’ve been chasing the wrong things,” I said. It was my undoing when light hit darkness and I realized the very deep implications of what it all meant.
When I read Deuteronomy 8, phrases focused through tears:
Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.
5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you. Deuteronomy 8:5 (NIV)
When God has searched my heart and revealed to me what I couldn’t even recognize in myself; when I am humbled to the ground and to my core; when the discipline consists of years lost and even bridges burned … what can I learn from desert wandering Israelites?
God can lead us through trials to show us what we’re made of, but more importantly, to reveal what he’s made of. He can quench thirst and satisfy hunger. He rightfully should be praised. And that following others [gods, idols] will surely lead to destruction.
Only through Jesus can I draw close to a Father who loves me deeply. He leads me, provides for me, and even humbles, tests and disciplines me.
So thankful.
Courtney (66books365)
A reach into the archives; this post originally published June 4, 2010.
Sixty-six books in a year 