During a conversation the other day, the topic came up about how so many people look to another place to be the answer to all of their problems. In this 3rd world country, they talk about how they want to move to “America”…so they can get a good job and become wealthy. There must be so many better opportunities in the “land of milk and honey”. Right?
Obviously the reality is so different from this perception. Quite often this land that promises the answers, is in reality the land of hardship, loneliness and poverty. Or else, it really isn’t quite what expected, and disappointment sets in.
So many of us look to other places, jobs, relationships, and churches, to give us what we think we need or deserve. Some of us flit from one to another…some of us just sit and dream about “what it could be like”. Either way, there isn’t a solution. We aren’t happy with where we are now, and so life becomes one wasted wish after another.
I have been reading about the exodus of the Israelites…as they left Egypt toward the Promised Land. The complained constantly!! God and Moses would take turns venting about how angry they were. Moses would want to quit taking care of the “children”, and God would want to destroy them all. Then they would have to calm each other down. It ended up being that God did end up so fed up with them, that an entire generation didn’t get to see the land promised to them. They had to die in the wilderness.
There are many people that end up dying in the wilderness. They whine and complain, and expect God and others to do everything for them. They want to be coddled, encouraged, carried and fed through their entire lives. And then they still don’t see their idea of a Promised Land.
What is the end goal here? To be in a physical place where there is untold wealth and opportunity? That seems to be the goal of many. The journey there can be slow or fast, and some make it…only to see that this wasn’t quite what they had expected. They are still lonely and unfulfilled.
As I look around, I realize that I am in the place I am supposed to be. For now. God has promised to take me on a journey. A journey toward Heaven. How I get there is what my life’s experience is. Do I complain about where I am? Do I whine about what I eat? Do I constantly look back to “better times”, like the Israelites did? Or do I fix my eye forward…and keep going. Going toward that eternal reward…that place where there are no more tears, and we can live in the presence of Jesus forever.
I need to remind myself, daily…even hourly, that this journey is temporary. I can’t look somewhere else and think I should be there instead. The land of promise is ahead…and the attitude I carry with me will define how the journey goes. I think that this will end well.