Turn Left at the Next Set of Lights

Almost two years ago to the day, I began a new phase in my life’s journey. It was a major move and a pretty big career adjustment. Even though I was sure that this was the route the Lord had carved out for me, there were moments when I had a few qualms. I wonder if Jacob felt the same way.

Joseph has sent for his father to join him in Egypt. If Jacob, or Israel, was still in possession of all his mental faculties he probably remembered what had happened to his father, Isaac, and his grandfather, Abraham, when they had gone to Egypt. My guess is that when he got to Beersheba and built his altar there he expressed his concerns to God. And God responded.

“‘I am God, the God of your father,’ he said. ‘Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes’” (Genesis 46:3, 4, NIV).

Israel had no idea that his descendants would end up as slaves in the country to which he was taking the seventy people who made up his family (46:27). He had no idea those seventy would turn into a couple of million, that “great nation” that God had promised. He didn’t know that the mighty hand of God would take that nation back to the land that he was now leaving. He couldn’t concern himself with what he didn’t know, only with what he already knew. If God said to go, then go was what he needed to do.

Yesterday, I was going through an almost thirty-year old collection of notes on another journey I was taking at the time. The paper is getting brittle and the ink is a bit smudged here and there. As I read through the pages of that journal, I was reminded again that sometimes the choices we make at God’s command don’t make sense to others. Sometimes they don’t make sense to us! Why would God ask Jacob to leave the Promised Land to go to Egypt only to return to the Promised Land four hundred years later?

I will never regret the decision I made thirty years ago because I can look back now and see the good that came out of it. I can’t see all the good that is coming out of the decision I made two years ago. Like Jacob, I may not live to see it.

But if God says, “GO,” then go we must.