When God Lets the Arrow Fly

Monday, May 8, 2023

When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest route to the Promised Land.  God said, “If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.”  So God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea.  Thus the Israelites left Egypt like an army ready for battle.  Exodus 13:17-18

When God directed Moses to lead his children out of bondage in Egypt, it would have been so easy to march them directly to Canaanland, and let the party begin!  That would have been the way I would have planned the trip.  

It’s about 775 miles from Egypt to Israel, so they could have walked straight there in two months.  But they didn’t cross the Jordan river for 40 years.  Evidently there was a lot more to Israel becoming God’s people, than just 10 plagues and a visit by the death angel, before they would be ready for the prosperity of the Promised Land.

There is much I do not understand about how the sovereignty of God, intersects with the free-will of human beings.  However, the Israelite forty-year layover in the desert[1] is a great teacher of how we can navigate being free-will beings created by a sovereign God.  It all comes down to using the free-will we’ve been gifted, to cooperate with the sovereignty of God’s plans, rather than just do what pleases us.  After all, it is God’s sandbox, and we are visitors, whom God wants to adopt as family.  It pays to be on one’s best behavior!

When it comes to how that behavior shapes our relationship with God, I have this image of an archer with a bow, pointed at a target…the arrow flies, released by the archer.  God is the archer; we are the arrows.  The target to which God points each of us, is the place closest to God’s heart.  He wants us to hit the bullseye (so to speak), and lodge there.  The purpose is blessing.  God wants us close to the source of the universe’s wealth of wisdom and well-being.  He wants what’s best for us.  The problem for we arrows, having been released from the bow string, is we have freedom to be blown about by gusts of winds, or objects (all kinds of sins against hitting the target). 

While God’s eye is never off the arrows he releases, our free will is a type of sovereignty over the moments we are granted to live.  We are pointed at the right target; we have free will to choose how we respond to the direction we’re given. That direction is clearly stated in the prophecy of Micah 6:8:

No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. 

The arrow God releases into this vastness of free will invariably chooses to do what is wrong, love power, and walk arrogantly and selfishly, despising God.  And God allows that.  (Full Stop)

The full weight of sovereignty of humankind over their destination is a gift of God to His loved creation.  But the weight of that gift’s incredible value is the corresponding accountability of consequence for corrupting the gift against the holiness of God.  (Again – Full Stop)  We despise God’s sovereignty with our free will, and the result is spiritual Chernobyl.

For You Today 

You have freedom; choose wisely how to cooperate with God today.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   An Uncertain Path  and  Cloud by Day - Fire by Night   

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Read all of the Exodus story, from Moses at the burning bush, to the miraculous rescue of God’s people at the Red Sea, and provision of God through 40 years of wandering in the desert.