Deuteronomy 8:2-3 (ESV) And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

What if I said that I was going to not feed my son for a whole day, because I wanted to teach him what true hunger was, to appreciate food, and understand how most of the world’s population lives? Well, I’d get thrown in jail for child neglect, that’s what! However, that’s how God parents. He doesn’t just meet superficial needs, although they are still needs. He’s looking to instill more in us…eternal perspectives. 

We wonder why God makes us wait. Think about the manna. God could’ve provided it before the Israelites even got hungry, but He didn’t. He made them wait. He made them feel hunger. God can do anything with a thought, but His timing is just as divine. God could’ve healed our marriage long before JW ever left, but He didn’t. If God never let us experience the pain of a broken marriage, then we’d never know the full value of a covenant marriage. We wouldn’t fully appreciate the existence of two beautiful, precious babies who Satan came so close to stealing before they were ever born. We wouldn’t have seen the miracles of God that we have. 

So many want to blame God because bad things happen to us: hunger, poverty, war, sickness, death. However, I’ve decided that it’s not God’s punishment that brings us to these points, but His everlasting mercy. For His mercy brings us to the end of ourselves, so that we may find a life which begins with Him. We just have to accept that God allows us to feel hunger, to make us more eternally minded.