It should have been a romantic dinner with my wife. The restaurant, the food, the service, everything was perfect. We exited the restaurant, hand in hand, and walked around the corner to where our car was parked. Was! It wasn’t there! Was it stolen? I frantically searched for clues when I looked at the sign above the parking meters. I was illegally parked in a restricted parking zone, and my car was towed. I called the posted number and discovered my car was impounded. We had to call a taxi to take us to the impound lot and pay a hefty fine to retrieve our car. We should have been home by 9 PM, but instead, it was after midnight when we returned. Frustrated, humiliated, and much poorer.

How often has a seemingly simple event ballooned into a convoluted hot mess? Who is to blame? Like this parking disaster, I am. The Bible is replete with examples of people embroiled in problems of their own doing. 

Normally it takes only eleven days to travel from Mount Sinai to Kadesh-barnea, going by way of Mount Seir. But forty years after the Israelites left Egypt, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses addressed the people of Israel, telling them everything the LORD had commanded him to say.

Deuteronomy 1:2-3 (NLT)

The Israelites were delivered from slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses. What should have been an eleven-day journey ballooned into forty years. Why? The Israelites doubted God’s providence and power to deliver them to the promised land. Even after witnessing the miraculous plagues He inflicted upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians, they were unwilling to believe He could safely take them through the desert wilderness. God gave them up to their sinful disobedience and allowed them to wander the desert for forty years. 

When events go awry, are we quick to blame God or others? Do we believe our intuition and feelings, or do we accept the will of God who created you and the universe?

Love and trust in the Lord; seek His will in your life.