I Knew You in the Wilderness:
When You Think You're Waiting, But You're Not!
I have just finished reading the book of Hosea with the Bible reading schedule I follow every year (find a free template in jesus-islife.com). I love the Lord’s patient to teach us some tough truth.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. Hosea 11:3,4
The beloved son Ephraim, who teaches us our place before the Lord, is also the one who the Lord caringly mentions here despite his wrong doings. When God calls us Jacob, Israel or Ephraim, He is referring to us as His own people. He does that in different ways according to each different time, but today I want to focus on how He always refers to us as His own.
I have reflected on some of the words in these two Bible verses and wondered about a lot of different things. If you know me a little better, you know about how my family is now waiting for over a year to be able to live through a moment I have been personally waiting for for seventeen years now. Whenever the boarders between countries reopen, we will be relocating from Brazil to Pennsylvania where both our hearts and ministry are. Honestly, we are so close now, it almost feels silly to write about it... But we're still waiting.
The waiting reminds me of the wilderness all-of-the-time. That time of life when we don’t quite feel like we are His very own. Don’t get me wrong, I could go on and on here about all the great things I am learning in this waiting season, about how I started writing and even wrote a book. But the bottom line friends, is that waiting is tough. It doesn’t feel nice to be the one doing that and it is a difficult season to be in.
By now, I was used to cocooning myself through waiting times like this, almost as if I was saying "wake me up when the time comes!" But last year, as the Lord started making a way for us to push play on our plans, I realized that I had misunderstood something crucial all along.
It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of the drought.
Hosea 13:6 ESV
All those years I wasn’t really the one doing the waiting, just as much as Israel wasn’t the one who was sitting around in the wilderness. The Lord was the one waiting for me, just like He waited for another generation to be raised until the hearts of the people in the wilderness were finally ready.
The Lord waited patiently for Israel to repent and get right – for forty years. Because He does not bargain, He cannot be mocked and He will not do something just because. Because His ways are perfect and we need to be perfected in many ways to walk through it with Him.
And the Lord waits patiently for you me too.
Today, as I look back in my own journey I learn to say a new prayer:
Lord, forgive me for making you wait so long, forgive me for placing myself above the place where I really was. Thank you for leading me with cords of kindness and bonds of love, while you had to wait for me. Thank you Jesus, for easing my yoke and bending down — when I wasn't worth it — to feed me. Thank you God, for waiting for me. When you make a way, all of the people of the earth will know that you are a faithful God, because you waited for mere people like me, to be ready for you.
