A Practical God

Deuteronomy 23:13 is a wonderful example of just how practical God is.

Think about it. Here you've got Israel, the nation, coming out of Egypt, headed for the Promised Land. Two to three million people - slaves - now free, migrating en-mass through the Sinai peninsula. That's like the whole city of San Antonio, Texas (and then some) picking up and moving to Midland, Texas. What a logistics nightmare - even for today's "advanced civilations." (Recall that it took several weeks to get everyone out of New Orleans after Hurricane's Katrina and Rita back in 2005. That was only 1.4 million people, not the 2-3 million in Egypt. And we have the best in ultra-modern, fast-moving, large capacity military and civilian equipment, not the onsie-twosie horse, donkey and camel commotion they had back then.)

And don't forget God's purpose - to make them a great and mighty nation. So how do you take 2-3 million slaves, who've been slaves for 400 years, physically relocate them over 300+ miles, through rivers and deserts, without having the whole bunch die of cholera?

Part of the answer lies in the above verse in Deuteronomy. We take it for granted today that when you're out in the woods and you gotta go, get away from the camp, do your business, and bury it. But nobody knew to do that back then. And it wasn't just because they were slaves that they didn't know. Moses was raised in the palace that controlled the mightiest military of the time. They didn't know it either. But God did.

Which brings me to the point. God isn't some mystical, nebulous notion. God is real, He's conversant, and He's actually quite brilliant. And, like Israel, God has a plan for my life and yours. And it's more than some ethereal, mystical haze of feelgood- and playniceynice-ism that far too many modern American churches have conjured up in place of an actual encounter with God. God's plan is certain, it's relevant, and it's practical.