Unexpected Blessings

Daily Reading: Deuteronomy 2

Scripture Focus: For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing. (Deuteronomy 2.7)

Devotional Thought: As we saw in Deuteronomy 1, the Lord is able to redeem our failures. He is even able to use us in his work after we have "blown it." In Deuteronomy 2, we see that while failure may bring hardship and pain, God is with us.

The people of Israel had failed to enter the land, and through their unbelief, they lost forty years in the Promised Land. In their wanderings, however, they had not forfeited other blessings from God. Moses reminded them:

• God has blessed you. Though they wandered, God had kept the Israelites together. They had faced enemies far greater than them. God helped them to defeat them. They had experienced sickness and disease. God healed them. They sinned. God forgave them.

• God knows where you are and where you need to go. Their wandering was not without direction. God was leading them through unfamiliar territory.

• God has been with you. After their failure to enter, God did not leave them. He stayed with them as seen in the pillar of cloud and fire. He met them at the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies.

• You have lacked nothing. When they were hungry, God gave them manna and quail. When they were thirsty, God gave them water from the rock. Even their shoes did not wear out!

Even though our wilderness wanderings seem long and lonely, even though we may have forfeited blessings that we can never reclaim, we have the assurance that God is with us to bless us, to guide us, and provide for us. Remember, God is in the business of unexpected blessings.

Prayer: Thank you, Heavenly Father, for your presence in my life and for how you have blessed me. Help me, in the abundance of what you have given me, to be a blessing to others. Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 10.12-15

12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;

forget not the afflicted.

13 Why does the wicked renounce God

and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?

14 But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,

that you may take it into your hands;

to you the helpless commits himself;

you have been the helper of the fatherless.

15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;

call his wickedness to account till you find none.