Lifequakes

“Just as you have declared: ‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished’ …In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people.”

Numbers 14:17-19

The giant and grasshopper mentality of the Israelites brought Moses to his knees once again, pleading. God’s reputation was at stake: “If you put these people to death all at one time, the nations who have heard this report about you (that you are with these people, v.14) will say, ‘The LORD was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath; so he slaughtered them in the desert’” (14:14-16).

True to character, “as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth” (14:21), God knew the time had come to draw a line in the sand. “In this desert your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me “(14:29). However, true to His promises Caleb and Joshua and the children under 20 would be safe, albeit shepherds for forty years, suffering for their parents’ unfaithfulness (14:30-33).  

Oh my, wandering in the desert for forty years, suffering for their sins and knowing what it was to have God against them was not exactly what the unfaithful had had in mind.

And the children under 20—what lessons would they learn in those forty years because of the unfaithfulness of their parents? What lessons do we learn in a time of waiting, whatever the reason?  

Traci Miles, in her book God’s Got You*, talks about Lifequakes: “something that upsets life as you know it…normal changes, or seasons and transitions…or a major incident that completely rocks your world.” We all have them. We wait for things to get better. We wonder—why me, why now, will this never end?

Our response—what should it be? We should live as God commended Caleb: “because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it” (14:24).

Nancy P

*God’s Got You…Embracing New Beginnings with Courage & Confidence, Esther Press, Cook

All Scripture quotations are from the NIV Translation 1973, 1978, 1984, unless otherwise noted.