Walk in Wisdom

Deuteronomy 8:7-9
“For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing.”

In God’s superlative vision for His people, beauty and bounty go hand in hand.

Notice here that the overflow of God’s loving heart satiates all our human longing. All five senses are invigorated in the Promised Land of divine communion. We draw near to Him in our wilderness wandering and find wells of nourishing water. But not mere water. Oh no—living water! Rushing water—moving water—bubbling streams where we can dip our feet on a hot day, and towering Niagara- like falls where we can sit for hours on the adjacent boulders in silent awe, refreshed by the cool mist that dances off the surface of the water and glistens in the beaming sunlight. “Come to Me all who thirst,” invited our Lord, and that invitation wasn’t a sip from a golden grail but a plunge into the deep fountains of His heart, gushing forth into brooks, flowing out into the valleys and hills: streams that we could follow for all eternity, and splash in, and picnic beside, and drink from, and never reach the end of their wonder.

But He’s Bread too, isn’t He?! Not dry and coarse bread though, but sweet, honied bread that supplies our need and sustains us for the journey. His Word is a Thanksgiving buffet, full of tropical fruits and honeys and jams and homemade Irish soda bread (the kind my wife just made from scratch last night), a feast as pleasing to our tastebuds as it is to our stomachs. Beauty and bounty rolled into one. That’s God’s vision! That’s the fellowship of faith. That’s the promise to all who walk with Him today!

And just think, friend: even this string of descriptions Moses weaves together by divine inspiration,along with the string of metaphors I added to them, are like sips of stagnant pond water or nibbles of stale crackers in comparison to the Spiritual Feast of faith they attempt to describe!