Have you felt like you’ve been walking through a desert this year? We can blame it on a pandemic, empty store shelves, and closed businesses and churches, but even as things open up, we’re not quite right.
It’s not just the pandemic, but other stuff that’s happened — a missed wedding, the inability to grieve a loss with others, and worry over the state of the country and world in general.
A recent reading of Psalm 78, had me thinking about my current state of being:
Asaph is reminding us to remember what our parents taught us about the amazing things God has done, and as we do, to share them with our children. As we give testimony to God’s work, they will “put their trust in God” and not forget.
Yet, when we stop sharing the good news of all God’s done in our life and world, then we quickly become, as Asaph writes, like those who proved to be a stubborn and rebellious generation. In our sin, we become disloyal to God and forget what he’s done.
For a generation of Israelites, such an attitude led to a pretty long stroll in the wilderness, where they spoke against the Lord and brazenly asked:
Can God spread a table in the desert?
Psalm 78:19
I guess God showed them. Remember something called manna and the quail that just “happened” to fly in?
Have the woes of 2020 led to unbelief? If you believe the God who reigned down manna from heaven, will you doubt him now? Do we not serve the same God of the Universe?
This desert table reminded me of a song by Christy Nockels. A line of which recently brought me to tears”
In a world so unstable
You keep setting a table here
Inviting me to rest in Your grace.
“If you Never” by Christy Nockels and Nathan Nockels. Six Steps Records, 2015.
We serve a God who sets tables in the desert. He sets tables in the storms. He sets tables in our grief, our hurt, our pain. And as he does so, he invites us to rest in his grace.
Satan does all he can to push us to forget, to focus on the suffering and self and forget the God who’s proven over and over and over again through both Scripture and our own life that his grace is sufficient.
Don’t miss an opportunity to sit at his desert table today and then tell your children and grandchildren, your friends and neighbors about his outpouring of grace in the midst of your stormy life. When you do, you open the door for them to experience the same abundance in this life and the next.
Find the stable at the table of grace he’s setting for you.
Grace and Peace