God, my God.

I sat on my recliner, tears pouring down my face. I held my Bible between my hands and prayed:

I don’t want to open this book. I am terrified to read it from cover to cover and find not one word to comfort me or guide me or encourage me. Such is how I feel right now. There are no words, no hope, you are simply not around. It’s too dark for me to find you.

I was at a crossroad. Decisions before me, unknown all around me and I didn’t know where the path was and how to walk it.

Are you still there, God? Are you listening? Why are you so clear some days and some you are as murky as muddy water? I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know where the road is that you are carving before me.

There was no comfort in prayer, there was no comfort anywhere. I was confused. I thought I knew God's will and now this…

I want to follow you wholeheartedly but I just don’t understand where you are going.

I held the book some more, feeling the soft leather between my fingers, turning it from side to side, trembling with the certainty that I would not hear from God from within its pages.

Not so bravely, with a sigh, I slowly opened the front cover to a place towards the beginning, without thinking. Had I thought I would not have. My comfort comes from David, from Jeremiah, from Paul, from the disciples. Never from Moses. Moses, so removed from my own life. Moses, who had spent time with God and knew the sound of His voice.

But my fingers touched the name Deuteronomy on the top of the page and I despaired.

What good can come out of Deuteronomy, the book of wanderers? How are they like me? I'm not wandering away from you, God; I'm seeking you. Oh, God, you are not listening still.

Then my foolish eyes landed on a phrase, straight up, first words. And I began to read and I did not stop:

“I tried to relieve your fears: ‘Don’t be terrified of them. God, your God, is leading the way; he is fighting for you. You saw what he did in the wilderness, how God, your God, carried you as a father carries his child, carried you the whole way until you arrived here. But now that you are here, you won’t trust God, your God- this same God who goes ahead of you in your travels to scout out a place to pitch camp, a fire by night and a cloud by day to show you the way to go.”    (Deuteronomy 1:29-33. The Message)

Oh, God, my God, you hear, you comfort, you speak still. God, my God, you are still leading me, you go before me, you fight for me. I remember, God, my God. I remember what you have done through all the many wilderness of my life. You carried me, you did. You carried me lovingly as a father until we were safely on the other side. I live with two remembrances of how you, God, my God, carried me safely through a wilderness once. They kissed me this morning, they called me "mami," and I remembered your goodness.

I want to trust you for you are the same God you were then, and you are still before me showing me the way to go. Carry me now even still until we stand together on the mountain top again, away from this valley of dry bones, and we sing a hymn of worship to God, our God, the never-forsaker, the promise-keeper. In you alone, I place my trust.