Wandering in the Wilderness

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This is Day 17 of my 40 Day Lenten Blog.

The Lord led the Israelites to the borders of Canaan, the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendents. There, God told Moses to send spies into the land. When the spies returned they told Moses and the Israelites that it truly was "a land flowing with milk and honey." They even brought some of the fruits of the land as proof. But they warned that the people who inhabited the land were giants who dwelt in fortified cities.

This frightened the Israelites and they didn't want to enter the land, believing they'd be killed. They didn't trust that God would lead them to victory despite the fact that He'd done it so many times already.

Caleb, one of the spies Moses had sent, tried in vain to convince the people that they should attack the Canaanites at once and take the land. But the people were too scared and they began to complain about Moses once more taking them out of Egypt to die by the sword in Canaan. Despite all the Lord had done for them, they still had little faith.

God was enraged by this continued lack of faith and threatened to destroy the Israelites and choose a new people to be His own. Moses begged God to be merciful and so the Lord agreed not to destroy them. But He also would not let them enter the land and instead sent them wandering through the wilderness for forty years until an new generation of Israelites arose.

While they were in the wilderness they were once again low on water and once again complained that Moses had brought them out of Egypt to die of thirst in the wilderness. God told Moses to go and tell a rock to release its water to them in front of everyone so that everyone could witness the glory of God in the miracle. But Moses got so angry at the people's continued lack of faith and constant complaining that instead of speaking to the rock as God had commanded he stuck the rock twice with his rod. Water indeed flowed from the rock, but God was angry with Moses.

Moses was supposed to speak gently to the rock and make water flow to awe the Israelites and glorify God, but by striking it, Moses took away the power of the miracle. This demonstrated a lack of faith on Moses' part and as his punishment, the Lord said that he would never set foot in the Promised Land.

The Israelite's lack of faith continued through their wandering in the wilderness. Even when God would defeat their enemies for them they did not trust Him and all they did was complain. To punish them, the Lord sent fiery serpents into their camps to bite them. The people begged God to save them and He told Moses to made a bronze statue of a serpent and everyone who looked to the serpent would be saved. Moses did so and place the serpent on a pole for the people to look to. All who turned their gaze to the serpent were saved from the venom. Why did God want them to look at a bronze snake? Couldn't He have just healed them? Yes, of course, but the turning to the bronze snake demonstrates both a faith in God and obedience to His commands. God often wants us to do things in this manner, to participate in our own salvation and the salvation of others as we will see as our story continues.

The bronze serpent on the pole is a prefiguring of Christ on the cross. We have but to look to the cross to be saved. But still so many refuse to turn to the cross and would prefer to suffer with the snakes of this world and their deadly venom.

After forty years, the Israelites finally finished their wandering in the desert and the Lord led them back to the borders of Canaan finally ready to march into the Promised Land.

R.C. VanLandingham is a Catholic homeschool dad just trying to make it through this life and into the next! He has written a Christian children's fantasy series about a boy named Peter Puckett!