Wow. I'm tired. Life has just been full speed since my last blog. I had a garage sale yesterday and my voice students gave a recital today. It was wonderful...the recital, not the garage sale. The garage sale made me $100 I didn't have before, and got rid of some junk I didn't need, so it was wonderful in that way, but too much work for me. I did it together with a few friends, so it was fun, but tiring more than anything. Today, the recital, was so fulfiling and made me so proud. I loved hearing the voices that came out of those precious, nervous girls, knowing how hard they'd worked and that I'd had something, even if only a little something, to do with it. Good times.
So...in the midst of my busyness, God has been teaching me and speaking to me in my thoughts.
In Exodus, after the Israelites were set free, there is a verse that keeps coming back to me, making me think.
"When Pharoah let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter..."
They took the long way. Why did He do that? Why not take the shortcut? Was God just being mean? Well, the shortcut would have taken them through the Philistine country....the land of their enemies...who'd love the chance to win a war against them. God knew that his children would run back to Egypt, prefering slavery over being killed by the Philistines, so he took them on the scenic route.
I get lost easily. I don't know if you know that about me, but I have NO sense of direction. I even picked a college that had a tower you could see all over the city, just so I could find my way back. I HATE being lost. I don't cry often, but I can get so frustrated being lost, that I have spent many a tear in the car in what seems to me to be "the middle of nowhere". I prefer the short way to the long way any day, but unfortunately I find the long way just by accident quite often, simply because I'm lost. I usually imagine that God smiles at me when I'm lost, shaking His humongous head like, "There she goes again...".
This verse tells me that actually, He LED me down the long road. I may not know why until I get to heaven. Maybe He has protected me....many times possibly, from a drunk driver... a potentially dangerous accident. Who knows? I just know that the next time I'm lost, or think there was a shorter way, and God didn't take me down that road, I'm going to thank Him. Instead of complaining impatiently about the inconvenience, I'm going to trust that He is God, and I am His. He knows what I need better than I do, and He came to give me life....abundantly.
