All the Way You Went: Trusting God in Times of Change

Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his child, all the way you went until you reached this place.” (Deuteronomy 1:29-31, NIV)

The biting February cold stung my face as I bolted around the nature preserve—narrowly avoiding patches of ice that threatened to render the tread on the bottom of my running shoes useless. I scurried around the banks of hibernating cattails, my breath heaving in my chest with urgency, as if I was trying to escape some great beast chomping at my heels.

And in a way, this is exactly what I was doing.

A week before, I had been offered a new job in Pennsylvania, and a week before that, I had decided to not apply to the graduate school in Portland that I’d been considering since the fall. The weight of unmade decisions and potential transition not only lobbed itself upon my back like a dead weight, but also pushed and wrestled against my body like a squirming toddler in a backpack. I couldn’t get it to be still, and, even worse, I couldn’t get the backpack off.

So I ran.

Weighing the pros and cons of the new job—a fantastic opportunity, in my field, and justice oriented, less steady, required a cross country move, and so far away from family—I wanted to scream across the mountains, begging God to send me a message. I wanted to open my inbox and find an email with a bonafide sign from the heavens. But of course, God doesn’t have email, and very rarely shouts.

I rounded the corner and past the stoplight, and looked up into the pine trees. There, in one of the thin high branches, towered a hawk, regal and confident.

“Isn’t she so afraid that tiny branch will break beneath her?” I thought to myself.

And then, as if the hawk opened her beak and spoke to me, I heard God’s voice in my head: See how that branch holds her up, despite everything? Why are you so afraid the tiny branch will break beneath you?

Nearly weeping, I finished my run, still afraid, but with more open space inside me. Later, I told a professor what I had realized—that I was the bird and, even though the branch appeared minuscule, I thought God wanted me to try to land on it.

She replied, in her matter-of-fact way, “That’s true. And if you fall, remember you also have wings.”

In Deuteronomy, Moses is encouraging the Israelite people who are acting like we so often do: stubborn and swamped with what if’s, terribly afraid to enter the land of God’s provision.

Moses says, “There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his child, all the way you went until you reached this place.”

As I thought about the ways God has carried me, as I contemplated the birds of the air who do not worry but land gracefully on twigs many feet above the ground, I remembered how many branches I have landed on, all the way I’ve gone until I reached the place I am now.

As we weather all of life’s endless transitions—of shifting relationships and careers, deaths of loved ones and changes in our environment, cross-country moves and persisting through the ordinary seasons, what would it look like to trust the branch beneath our feet will hold when we land on it? And if the branch beneath us seems to be breaking, what would it look like to leap, trusting the wings God has given us?

May we hold fast to the God of provision amidst the clouds of doubt!

Scripture for meditation

Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his child, all the way you went until you reached this place.”
Deuteronomy 1:29-31, NIV

Discussion & journal prompts

As you meditate this morning, consider the following questions: 
What is keeping you from landing on the tiny branch beneath you?

What would are the wings God has given you, and what would it look like to trust them?

Where has God carried you in the past, and where is God carrying you now?

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