MY WASTELAND

This past week has been an interesting one. With my brother gone & the house empty, I don't have anyone to come home to at night to ask how my day was or to cook dinner with, or even just to hang out. I have been semi-lonely, but I do know that I am not alone. I'm curious to see how my life will be over this next year, but am anxious at the same time. Though my life looks picturesque (living in England & traveling Europe), I do wonder if I have lost the way & what in the world am I doing here. I am learning alot living here & if I was in the comfort of my parents home, living the same life I am living here, but with their security, rather than God's security, I won't be the person I am today & the person God wants me to be oneday. Today I read this devotional by Elisabeth Elliot that relates to what I am feeling (at the moment). I pray that it will give you inspiration if you are going through the wasteland!!!! Please let me know if I can pray for you!!!!

There are dry, fruitless, lonely places in each of our lives, where we seem to travel alone, sometimes feeling as though we must surely have lost the way. What am I doing here? How did this happen? Lord, get me out of this!
He does not get us out. Not when we ask for it, at any rate, because it was He all along who brought us to this place. He has been here before--it is no wilderness to Him, and He walks with us. There are things to be seen and learned in these apparent wastelands which cannot be seen and learned in the "city"--in places of comfort, convenience, and company.
God does not intend to make it no wasteland. He intends rather to keep us--to hold us with his strength, to sustain us with his sure words--in a place where there is nothing else we can count on.
"God did not guide them by the road towards the Philistines, although that was the shortest...God made them go round by way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea" (Ex 13:17,18 NEB).
Imagine what Israel and all of us who worship Israel's God would have missed if they had gone by the short route--the thrilling story of the deliverance from Egypt's chariots when the sea was rolled back. Let's not ask for shortcuts. Let's keep alert for the wonders our Guide will show us in the wilderness.