“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.” Isaiah 40:28

Bewildering Choices

Outside our office, a mother duck has decided that the low bush near our entry door is a good place to sit on her eggs. This entry is well-trafficked, so we wonder why she thought it was a good spot for nesting. Doesn’t she realize there is a pond just two blocks away, complete with reeds to hide in, ample bugs for dinner, and cool, open waters to float upon? We can only assume she does not know. 

A similar thought presented itself in a different setting. My husband and I were visiting a desert location, and as we drove along the sandy streets, we saw the same view everywhere we looked: flat, hot, treeless sand dotted with oddly misshapen Joshua trees that seemed to have been haphazardly tossed into the setting without purpose. (They certainly didn’t provide any shade—even for a lizard.) And yet, someone had parked a single-wide mobile home in the middle of that featureless landscape. I wondered what would make a person look at this and say, ‘This looks like a good spot,’ and put their home there? I had an urge to knock on their door and say, “Don’t you know that there are beautiful places to live?”

I know, I hear you stating the obvious: There’s no accounting for taste. Some people really do like the desert. 

But a duck having a taste for a well-trafficked nesting spot, and a family having a taste for the dry, hot, windblown, sandy, rattlesnake-infested desert, makes me wonder if they have not known, have not heard, that there is something better.

Home choices may be individualized, but what truly bewilders me is when we “have a taste” for anything less than a full-on, totally immersed, all-out relationship with our heavenly Father. We settle for Sunday worship and prayers only. We do not desire (and thus do not experience) the “more” of God—the abundance, the filling, the satisfaction. We don’t expect more beauty or joy in our lives. We don’t look for a fresh revelation. We don’t ask for enlarged dreams or hearts or love. We don’t expect height and depth and width in our experience with Him.

Haven’t we heard there is more? Don’t we know God is bigger?

Oh my friends, God is so much more than any of us has seen or heard or known or thought—even for those who have walked with Him a long time. Let’s ask Him to surprise us with newness of life. Let’s be open to all He longs to give. Let’s be so immersed in Him that we never desire anything less.

“Lord, You long to show us what is better than the things we settle for. We are open to You. Amen.”