Sunday, October 16, 2016

Desert tracks

North Kordofan, Sudan, 1987

From the year I spent in the desert of Sudan so long ago, I still remember one sure way to get stuck in the burning sand: Leave the tracks of the vehicles that went before you.

Often the sand was so deep that it created enough resistance to our vehicle's momentum that we could not keep moving unless we followed the path of a bigger and stronger vehicle that had gone before us. Those paths in the desert were literal life savers for us as we roamed a dangerous and inhospitable wilderness in our little Land Rover.

That's why I feel that Psalm 85:13 is so well stated in the New King James Version: "Righteousness will go before Him, And shall make His footsteps our pathway." 

I'm so grateful that the footsteps of someone bigger and stronger than us has actually created the pathway on which we walk, or we would surely get bogged down in the toilsome badlands we often travel through. Psalm 85:13 tells us that whatever we're going through, God has prepared a path of righteousness for us to walk along. And God even assures us in the previous verse that "the LORD will give what is good; and our land will yield its increase" (85:12).

I believe that means that, metaphorically, the terrain we desperately need God's help to travel through lest we get stuck amidst life's difficulties, is the very same ground that He promises will also provide a blessing to us and yield an increase in our lives. We can be sure that because God has gone ahead of us in righteousness, the path He has prepared for us is good, no matter where we find ourselves along the way!

© 2016 by Ken Peters