Go! See!

I love to travel, I think it was inbred into my DNA. Throughout my life, when my mom would say "ok we're going to see your sister" it was an adventure...no literally an adventure! What was always funny is that even using a map, going along the route planned each day (no not before leaving), sometimes along the freeway but most days on some country back road that led in the general direction of our destination. We would go out of our way to see some special landmark or place that she had heard about. One time, when we were leaving SC (she and my aunt coming to pick me up from AIT graduation) we took a scenic route through WV looking for the infamous bridge that people had started bungy jumping off of. After 2 hours of driving the same 4 miles, back and forth, we realized that the bridge we were traveling over was the bridge we were looking for....me and mom laughed my aunt not so much. The fun thing about being raised by a single mother was that she was - I think- a little bi-polar. She would come up with a plan and one day get up and say 'let's go, we're going on a trip' and off we'd go. No planning or very little planning, she would just load us up and away we'd go!

Now, I am much more of a planner which is odd because I wasn't raised that way, maybe because I was raised that way. I laugh because my husband could NEVER go on a trip with my mother...I mean NEVER! HAHA! And as I remember the instant going without warning, I thought it was funny that she could just instantly decide that the trip was going to happen, pack up what was needed, load me and my brother up, and out the door we'd go. It was as though she wasn't afraid of anything, willing to just go and see things and be in places that she had never been without any cares.She would take us to go and see things that I wish I had taken my children to go and see, places that are just pictures to my children but places that I have seen, had pictures taken standing in front of, places that are majestic that could only be described as God made. She would take us without any fear, and go.

This morning I started a journey, not a physical journey, but a journey all the same...a journey through Elah ha-Devarim - to you and me Deuteronomy. For whatever reason, I was urged to begin reading this elongated book with 34 chapters, that is the be'er (bay-air), explanation, plain detail, simple writing of the law that God gave the Isrealites. Sounds like an exciting book doesn't it! I told you yesterday that this was going to be exciting...are you ready to find out what I found? I found a man who was told to Get up and Go, and he took with him thousands and thousands of people. He was given no direction, just a cloud by day and  fire by night to follow on a trip for 11 days. The didn't take anything from when they were told to go, just what they needed, nothing else and off they went. I and you know that this man led the Isrealites to the Jordan to take the promised land God promised these people. And you and I know that those who left Egypt never got to see that land, not even the man. These people we're going to get to see a land that they had been told about for generations; stories told about a land that was to be theirs; a land that was beautiful and full of fruit; and they let it slip through their hands. They went but they never got to really see what they were promised. Could you imagine being told your entire life, for generations, about a place that was real, that you were going to get to see and then never get to see it? Never get to set foot near or in it? Never get a picture of you standing in front of it? That's what happened to these people, they lost faith, fell to unbelief, and all of a sudden they only got to see the same desert for 40 yrs, the same sand, the same mountain, the same place they had been before, the same, the same.

The journey I'm on to read this book was just a read, that's what it started out as this morning, something that I felt inspired to do, mostly because I haven't read it ever. What I found was a couple sentences that detailed my history, get up and go to see, to wait and let things happen. My journey through Elah ha-Devarim has all of a sudden, in 6 verses changed...changed from a read to what? I don't know but something happened when I read what Moses said to the people of Israel as they were about to enter the promise land.   A journey that was just to get up and Go, See.  Deut 1:6-8 "The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb (Sinai) saying " You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn, Get up, Go, and set your journey and go to the hill country of the Amorite, and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the  hill country and in all the lowland and in the Negev and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. SEE, I have placed the land before you; GO in and posses the land which the Lord swore to give your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to them and their descendants after them." I don't know what it is that I am suppose to See, not yet, but I know that in this verse there is something that God it telling me to move from, move away from this protected place that I have manufactured and Go. What is it He is trying to tell me? My best guess is that I need to step out in faith in something He has been putting before me, step out and go without thinking just go....there is something out there He has placed for me to see. Now all I have to do is cast off the unbelief that has taken up residency, step out of the fortress that is between me and the see, and go. What am I waiting for? What are you waiting for?
"And God said, why are you waiting, why have you stayed here this long? There is nothing here for you, there is not fruit, no land, it is desolate. Ger up and Go, I have something for you to See. Past the walls that surround you, past the things that are in your way. Trust me! The things I have for you stretch from lowlands beyond the valley, over the hills and mountains to the sea. Go and See."