THERE

But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.  Deuteronomy 4:29

There’s a lot on my mind these days.  So much is going on in my head, in fact, that I cannot recall exactly how I intended to begin this blog post.  I started out this morning, inspired.  I had an “aha” moment, skipped a space, and jumped down to expound upon the connection I discovered between Moses’ words in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah’s words in Jeremiah chapter 29.  Then I realized that I needed to get ready for church, and since then, I’ve been to church, Walmart, had lunch and a nap, worked a bit on the camper with Jeff, and now here I am, trying to remember what it was that I set out to write this morning. 

Whatever it was, it is gone.

I was getting frustrated with myself, wondering if my memory is getting faulty with age, or if it is just the nature of this season of life…  I’m going to go with the latter, because that’s really all I’m prepared to process at the moment!

So, I re-read the verse above, and I realize that perhaps THAT is the point!

“But from there…” Moses says to the children of Israel.  Where is “THERE”?

Well, here’s the background that caught me this morning:

Moses was speaking to the children of Israel as they were preparing to go into the Promised Land.  He already knew that the people were going to rebel and that they would fall into idolatry.  Moses had already been down this road with them a number of times over the years and I can imagine the sorrow that must have been in his heart at that moment. 

Moses himself would not be going with them into Canaan.  His own bit of rebellion years earlier had cost him that opportunity.  He could have been frustrated or bitter, but from the Scriptures, it would seem that he was neither.  He was concerned.  He wanted the children of Israel to be successful and he wanted a good future for them.  But he knew that they were going to do some dumb, faithless things.  So, before he left them, Moses wanted to be sure that they knew that after they fell, the Lord would still be ready to pick them back up.

And fall they did.

After years of rebellion and idol worship and failing to keep God’s commandments, the people were taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar.

Many years later, Jeremiah the prophet echoes Moses’ message as he delivers the Lord’s message to the captives:

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.  Jeremiah 29:13

What Moses foretold was being fulfilled.  The people had rebelled, and they were held captive by a foreign nation (see Deut. 4:26-27).  What Moses had told their ancestors, Jeremiah repeated to the captives.  “When you seek the Lord, you will find Him!”

For the children of Israel, “there” was Babylon, many years later.  “There” was an uncomfortable place.  It was a place where they didn’t want to be.  They didn’t know the language.  They didn’t know the customs.  They probably didn’t want to.  This was not where they wanted to be. 

I think this is an important principle that we need to understand (that I need to understand).

Life often takes us to places and situations that are not necessarily of our choosing.  Sometimes, like the children of Israel, we face hard times due to our own poor decisions.  Sometimes we end up there because of someone else’s decisions.  HOW we got there is not the point.  THAT we got there is.  No matter how you ended up in whatever mess you may find yourself, how you got there is less of an issue than what you need to do now that you are there.  (That’s not to say that we should not learn from our mistakes, but we mustn’t dwell on the past.  We cannot change what has happened.  We can only move forward.)

I don’t know what THERE looks like for you today.  For me, it a pretty uncertain place – no job, no income, no foundation under my home (and no permanent place to park our wheels).  THERE may feel like a place from which you cannot see a way out, or where there seems to be no sense of direction.

I believe what God is saying is that this is how it should be.  Moses did not tell the children of Israel that when they found themselves THERE that they should seek a direction.  He did not tell them to look for an escape.  Jeremiah, in fact, told the captives to settle in THERE for a long wait (70 years!).

What Moses and Jeremiah told the people to seek was GOD!

They said that if the people would seek the Lord with all of their heart and soul, they would find HIM – not an escape plan, not a direction, not deliverance.  They would find GOD.

So, for me, the lesson here is pretty simple.  I need to be sure that what I am seeking in my “THERE” is God.  Just God.  Not God and a job.  Not God and a home.  Not God and stability.  Not God and anything.  Just GOD.  With all my heart and soul.

The really great promise with that is that God said He would be found.  He’s not hiding.  We really don’t have to look hard – we just have to look – FOR HIM.

The great thing is, He is all we need. 

The captives did eventually get to go home.  While they were waiting, God was able to do great things in them and through them, but He did it in the THERE.

Whatever your THERE may look like, God is there with you.  He is not hiding – He is waiting.  He is waiting for you to stop seeking stuff, and start seeking Him.  When you seek, you will find.  That’s good news!

…Just a thought…