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- Exodus 13:17-18
When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.
Reminder for those in a desert season: God wastes nothing.
Thomas Merton gave us wonderful perspective on what God does in the wilderness:
“The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men.
The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit. The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone. They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had travelled directly to it.
God’s plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back upon the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone.”