The Long Way Around

It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road. (Deut 1:2)

It’s only an eleven day journey, but it took the Israelites forty years. Eleven days to walk that distance, and forty years to prepare their hearts. The forty year purification of those doubters and sinners in Israel is a metaphor for the lifelong process of my own sanctification, in which the doubts and sins must be slowly purged from my life. Why does it take so long? How can it take only a few days to learn the essentials of the faith and forty years to put them into practice? In less than a year it will have been forty years since I was saved. You’d think I’d be further along. For nearly half that time I wasn’t even walking with the Lord at all. But twenty years is still a long time. The answer is, I think, that the flesh dies slowly. One by one, the Israelites who sinned died off, and one by one my sinful attitudes and habits die off as well. Lord, thank you for your patience with me. I am glad that you can take the long view. I don’t think I would have been able to put up with me! But in your great love and wisdom you have patiently followed your plan for my life, slowly shaping me into the man you want me to be. I know you will finish what you have begun. Thank you. I yield to your guiding hand, as best as I am able. Have your way in me. Amen.