This week, the Lord asked me to do something that I did not want to do.
First, I tried the docile Moses approach of offering excuses: “I don’t feel well.” “What if bad stuff happens?” “What if it’s haaaaaard?”
The Lord told me the same thing He told Moses. “My name is not the What-If. I AM.”
That is an indisputable fact, but my docile excuses flared right up into good old fashioned tantrum throwing.
“I can’t do this, Lord. I don’t want to. I’m not going to.”
While I was piously reading Psalm 78, I heard my own story told back to me: “Yet they sinned still more against Him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert. They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?’”
Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
As I read and prayed, I thought of the women in my church who often put others before themselves to do hard things, even if bad stuff happens, even when they don’t feel well, because our God is able to sustain them in the wilderness.
They care for the elderly and babies. They ride endless addiction cycles with their loved ones, never giving up hope. They make soup for the sick. They bring hope, and it is because they know that the Lord can definitely spread a table in the wilderness. The Lord provides each thing we need at each step of the journey because He is good.
We had ladies’ prayer night at the church on Thursday, and their encouragement helped me to repent, submit, and say yes to the Lord.
What wilderness are you walking through? The Lord not only spreads His table there but also, as the Psalmist reminds us, even in the presence of our enemies. His supply is limitless.
My Complaint:
Can you spread a table in this wilderness?
Will you grind these grains of sand?
Will you milk the mountain- hard as stone
or set the plates by hand?
Will you make a garden grow from naught?
What will we do for meat?
Perhaps You’ll birth and raise and kill
and bake them in this heat?
God’s Reply:
Why rebel and go your way
demanding the food you crave
when anywhere but this wilderness
would be an early grave?
It was I who led you here
by cloud and fiery light.
My hand was the table
that you sat at day and night.
I brought the water from the Rock
and poured down heaven’s grain.
It was I who made and sent the doves
when their flocks fell down like rain.
My compassion clothed you
over and over again.
I brought you to this wilderness
so you would call Me ‘Friend.’
I wrote this poem after Thursday prayer night, and as I got back into my car, though I hadn’t been using my music app or listening to music for days, the Sidewalk Prophets song, “Come to the Table” began to play over the car speakers.
God is good.
Sarah Dixon Young 