Day 57: Deuteronomy 1-3

Moses is giving his final speech to the Israelites. It may be a long one. (As an aside, I am very curious how this works. How does one man speak "to all Israel" without amplification? There must be something going on here to get his communication out to everyone...I'm curious about what that might be.) Anyway, Moses begins by giving a recap of the past 40-50 years. He talks about being ready to enter the promised land and sending spies in to check it out and how they refused to go in because they were scared and how that resulted in 40 more years of wandering in the wilderness until a whole generation passes away. I find Moses' perspective on this interesting when he says:

You grumbled in your tents and said, “The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. (1:27)

The people thought the Lord hated them...when the exact opposite is the case. Why did they think that? They thought that because they believed they were in a situation that they couldn't deal with. Things looked bleak. The people in front of them were scary. By all visible standards they had no hope of taking the land...all they had was God saying, "Go ahead, I'm with you. You can do this." I can't help but wonder how many times we (I) are (am) intimidated by our (my) circumstances which, by all visible standards, are overwhelming. We feel that God must hate us or something for allowing us to be in such a hopeless position when, in fact, the exact opposite is true. He loves us...He is right there with us saying, "Go ahead, I'm with you. You can do this."