Word of Encouragement (12/29/2022)

“He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. ¹¹Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, ¹² the LORD alone guided him, no foreign god was with him. ¹³ He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. ¹⁴ Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs, rams of Bashan and goats, with the very finest of the wheat—and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape. (Deut. 32:10-14)

In vv. 10-12, Moses describes God’s tender care for the people of Israel. First, Moses reminds them of their pitiful condition, in which they were found: “...in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness.” It may seem like he is referring to God’s care for them during the wilderness journey. That is certainly true, but we will see that it is not limited to that. God did not find the Israelites in the wilderness, left alone, fending for themselves helplessly. It was God, who brought them into the wilderness after delivering them from Egypt. But since they were in the wilderness, Moses was using the wilderness imagery to describe their former condition before they entered a covenant relationship with God. (We know that this was the case because of the way Moss goes on to describe Israel’s condition after her covenant with God—he uses the imagery of living in a fertile land even though Israel was still in the wilderness.)

How do you deal with your past? As we finish this year, are there some things you regret and would rather forget? Many of us can’t wait till the New Year so we can bury this year with all its unpleasant incidents in the past and move on. But just because the New Year comes doesn’t mean that we are free from the past, does it? The calendar year changes, and we must start writing “23” on our checks (for those of us, who still use checks!), but the New Year doesn’t magically change our situation or circumstances into a blank stale, does it? Our past may lie in the past, but its tentacles reach far into the present and even the future.

Notice how Moses reminds the Israelites of her past unapologetically. The message is clear: Israel should not forget how her life used to be before she entered a covenant relationship with the LORD. Similarly, we should never forget what our lives were like before we put our faith in Jesus Christ. This is not to say that we should be beholden to our past and live in it as its slave. In Jesus Christ, we can embrace our past instead of trying to forget it or escape from it. Trying to forget or escape from it is futile because our past cannot be undone. But in Jesus Christ, we can embrace it as a part of God’s master plan for our lives, designed by His goodwill toward us. We cannot deny that even the tragic events in our past were woven into our life’s story to bring us to the present, in which we live as God’s beloved children, destined for eternal glory. Even our past failures and sins should be remembered so that we should be even more vigilant about them and give thanks to God for not counting them against us but forgiving them in Jesus Christ.

Are you reconciled with your past because you trust in Jesus Christ and are reconciled with God, the sovereign Lord of all, even of your past history? Are you ready to embrace your past, including all the unpleasant, unfortunate, heart-breaking incidents because God has used them to bring you to the saving knowledge of Christ and opened up a glorious future for you?

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