Psalm 107:4-9

Psalm 107:4-9

Some of you wandered for years in the desert,
looking but not finding a good place to live,
Half-starved and parched with thirst,
staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion.
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to God.
He got you out in the nick of time;
He put your feet on a wonderful road
that took you straight to a good place to live.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
He poured great draughts of water down parched throats;
the starved and hungry got plenty to eat.

Those verses bring to mind a vast desert, dry and hot.  Sounds like wilderness.  You can imagine the exiles crossing the deserts of Syria to return to Jerusalem.  And maybe they traveled through the desert for years, trying to reach home, desperate, and reaching the point of exhaustion.  Expand that image – take it out of history.  Have you been in that kind of wilderness?  Maybe that kind of wilderness is our, or someone else’s, struggle to reach God.  We desperately thirst for God and are exhausted from the search.  Maybe that kind of wilderness is experienced by someone who is lost, away from home, or who doesn’t have a home, and struggles to come out of exile.  What is the good news for us in this passage? 

When we call to God, God hears us.  God will travel with us on the road, placing our very steps, giving us direction.  God will answer our needs, quench our thirst.  God will bring us home.