With God as Guide

As a Christmas present to myself, I went ahead and bought the new Jordan Peterson book “We Who Wrestle with God.” I have especially enjoyed his series on Exodus where he and a panel of other academics and scholars unpack Mose’s escape from tyranny, only to find themselves in the desert. As I reflected on my own life, I saw clearer much of the symbolism in recent years. We left the Seattle area to a place that God would show us, and I could tell you with 100% certainty that I would have never picked this land. We don’t exactly get to choose, and I find this to be a better option when I have been prone to make the worst decisions for myself in the moment. I’d rather someone make a choice for me who knows me, just as often I receive far better presents than I’d gift to myself, (besides this book of course). If I didn’t choose it, then I’m far more confident that something good awaits. I do not have to toss and turn wondering if I had led my family to the wrong destination, not when the choice has been decided by outside forces in a miraculous move across country completely paid for with 100 miracles circling the story much like a Biblical excerpt. All I know is that I escaped the tyranny- whether self inflicted, (most of it of course was) or via exterior happenstance, (and there was that too). Up until recently, I thought for certain that we had entered the theoretical Promised Land, but in my anxiousness to then take it over, I had forgotten the dreaded story of the desert. Compared to the tyranny, the desert is wonderful, but it has come with its own frustrations. Mostly, the desert is not meant to be taken over. It’s an in between, and if you try and take it over, it becomes evident that nothing can be or should be built there.