It didn’t start with the forty years in the wilderness, this living in temporary dwellings. In Israel’s earliest days - when it was God speaking to one man, inviting him to leave all he knew and take a journey to a new land (that God would show him) - they lived in tents then, too. They had to – they were pilgrims, travelers, impermanently living location to location as they followed God’s call to their “next”. These times of transition, of temporary dwellings, can be unsettling (especially when it goes on for YEARS!). When have you been in a season like this – when you were uprooted from a place that felt more “permanent”, and compelled onto a journey that involved not quite feeling-at-home for a while? These wilderness times can be hard, lonely, disorienting. But they can also be times full of hope, the delight of following the call out of the places that had perhaps felt stable but were also restricting. The joy of saying “yes” to an invitation to freedom. Where are you in a place right now of being invited out of a “settled” place and into a journey, where you may be living in temporary dwellings for a while? Have you been avoiding making that decision, out of fear of where it will take you and whether you will be safe in the interim? Hold those invitations with God today. Pay attention. Where is Love leading you out of somewhere comfortable and toward a new place, full of life? What is it like to be in the temporary dwelling of the in-between time?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2021-09-28 14:02:54 UTC