When I was a girl, my family would pack up our red Toyota truck, and drive across the country to go camping for weeks at a time. It was always a lot of fun for my sisters and I as children, because we got to run and play outside, explore new places, and just be kids.At the end of the two or three weeks, though, we were ready to be sleeping in our own beds, watching TV, and having a refrigerator full of food ready to be eaten. Now imagine if you had to spend your whole life on one long camping trip? The children of Israel did just that for forty years.
In Bible class here in Arequipa, the children are learning about how God brought the Israelites into the promised land. One of the lessons they have been learning about is how the twelve spies went to search out the land of Canaan, but only two of the ten trusted God to give them the land. Since the people believed the ten bad spies rather than Joshua and Caleb, they spent the next forty years in the desert, never able to receive what God had promised them.They spent that time in the desert because they didn’t trust God would take care of them. Sometimes we suffer consequences because we don’t think that God will take care of us, whether it is not trusting God or not trusting our parents to do what is best for us.The children here in Arequipa have to trust God that their parents know what is best for them and can take care of them. They trust that God will give them good things, even when it doesn’t seem like He will. Can you think of a time when you didn’t trust your parents to do what was best for you? What happened? As you probably learned, and the kids here are learning from the Israelites, it is always best to trust God, even when it doesn’t seem like he is going to take care of us, because he always does, and not trusting in God, usually means we find ourselves in a bigger mess than if we had had faith.