Clearing the way

 This week's verses are Exodus 23:27-29:

“I will send my terror before you, and I will alarm all the people whom you encounter; I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets before you that will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite before you. I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals multiply against you. 

 Sometimes God shares his plans with us and we wonder how all of that is going to work out, given the circumstances. These verses are an unusual example of a time when God tells people in advance how things will happen. Because a promise that big seems crazy when looked at from before it happens, and when it unfolds slowly it will seem crazy as it happens too.

At the time when God spoke to them, Israel was a second rate, B-list mob of refugees from the Egyptian civilization making their way to the land God had promised them, which was occupied already by people who were stronger and more advanced than them. There was no reason to believe that they wouldn't get wiped out if they tried to invade the land they were promised. They didn't have any allies or walled cities to retreat to, but their future victims did.

In the verses leading up to these, God describes an angel of his presence that will go before the Israelites and begin to clear out the current occupants of the promised land. And here he describes sending terror and natural pests against them to clear them out. These are two things you can't predict, and which you could later use to explain it all away as luck, if they weren't predicted in advance.

But God often works like that in our lives. Seemingly random things happen to prepare the circumstances for what we were promised, things which, if it weren't for the promise, would have just seemed like luck and coincidence. And they often happen gradually, no more quickly than we could handle them, lest we arrive at the promise before we're equipped to handle it.

There's also a peace in seeing that God looks out for us. The Israelites had to struggle and be obedient in God's timing and directions when claiming their promised land, but they didn't have to do all of the work themselves. They didn't have to invent new weapons or try to make people fear them. God did all of that. They just had to go where they were told and do what was asked of them.

So if you're in a situation where you need to get to point B, but you have no idea how to cross from point A, trust God to work out the details. He parted the Red Sea, supplied water from a solid rock, and changed hearts and nature itself to make a way for what he promised to come into being for the Israelites. Same God, same possibilities.

So don't worry. If you need to move, God will make the path for you.