Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Light Comes On! - April 27, 2011

Good wet Wednesday morning! According to the weather map, more moisture is headed our way this morning too... and I ran my sprinklers today, which if you think about it kind of explains the excess of moisture in my yard too. I just can't quite seem to get everything right. Ah well, praise God for showing me the One who can and did get everything right. Last night I read the story of Joshua leading the people across the Jordan River for the first time. The forty years of wandering the desert had come to an end and this time the people had enough faith to step into the water trusting in God completely. This is the story of that interesting test where the priests had to shoulder the ark and step toward the water first. The water then stopped flowing near a town called Adam, and piled up in a great heap. What I found interesting is that God didn't just stop the flow of water, He also dried up the ground. The Bible states that the Israelites walked across on dry ground.

If the Israelites had tried that here in Nebraska (the Platte River, not the prairie sod that is), and God didn't take care of that little dry ground detail, they would have been trying to ford several feet of mud in many places. That dry ground bit is an important detail. While the Israelite population was much reduced from their time in the wilderness, there is no way that all the people and animals could have crossed even a small river bottom without that dry ground. And what about the warriors with their armor? Not only that, but the ground dried up immediately when God gave the word, for certainly the priests under that ark (gold is heavy) would have bogged down in any mud. What that story tells me is that when God sends us somewhere, or tells us to go somewhere, He will take care of the details too.

It is not easy to take off on faith. Those priests stepping into the flowing Jordan River were pretty much doomed without God's act. In eternity we face that same river of doom without the act that Jesus did on the cross. Without the sacrifice God accepted at Calvary, we would step from the physical death and glub, glub, glub, we would sink for all eternity into the lake of fire. However, Jesus did pay the price God demanded for sin, and when we take that step into the darkness, the Light will come on. When we choose to believe in Jesus, the Light comes on!

Have a great day with the Light on!

Bucky

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