2023_10_27 Insight Post- Karenna Rowenhorst
This week’s reading- Nehemiah 8-9, Haggai 1
Hiking has never been my favorite outdoor activity. I love the outdoors, but walking for miles and miles over rocky terrain with plenty of elevation change is just not that enjoyable for me. Not because I don’t enjoy the views or the peaceful atmosphere, but mostly because I can’t enjoy any of that when my feet are hurting. I just did not luck out in the feet department. At my first trip to a podiatrist, he took my foot and rotated it around like a pedal on a bicycle and said, ‘See what I’m doing with your foot? I shouldn’t be able to do that.” Walking for more than a few miles, for me, results in lots of pain from overly loose ligaments.
So when I came across Nehemiah 9:21 in our Bible Reading Plan this week, it got me thinking about how God provided for the Israelites’ feet when they were in the wilderness. I remembered the manna and the quail, and the water from the rock, but I had forgotten about their feet! In the middle of learning a very big lesson about following God and submitting to his plans, God showed incredibly tender care to physically sustain his people in the small things. He preserves their feet. Here is the verse:
“For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing in all that time. Their clothes didn’t wear out, and their feet didn’t swell!” Nehemiah 9:21
I know if I had been an Israelite walking through the desert for most or all of my life, I would be thinking about my feet. Our feet hold us up, and our feet move us around. Feet are basically the foundation of our body. And despite all the complaining and disobedience from the people of God, God continued to bless them in ways that allowed them to keep moving forward.
When I am in the middle of a struggle, a loss, a heartache, it can feel like God is distant. Or maybe I question if He is seeing me at all. If I only focus on big changes, I can get impatient or frustrated waiting for God to show up. And sometimes God will show up in a big way, but sometimes, if there is a greater purpose in allowing whatever I’m going through, God will show up in little ways.
When Ezra prays and called the people to remember, he spoke to them about miracles from big to small. There was leading people out of slavery, there was parting of the sea, but there were also feet that never swelled.
Are you looking for the little mercies in your life? You may be wandering in a desert, and maybe you still have a lot to learn about following God, but that doesn’t mean that He can’t bless you along the way. Little mercies are everywhere if you slow down and look for them. When you find them, don’t forget to praise God for the ways He is sustaining you through the hard parts of life.
Karenna Rowenhorst
Senior Director of Education