April 24

From Flint to Fountain

 

The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. —Exodus 17:5-7

Hard, dry places. Those times when we struggle to find more hope than worry in our lives. It’s not a matter of if we will go through tough seasons, but simply when—and how often. And oftentimes, the trials seem quite random. We all know people who never smoked a day in their life and then died young from lung cancer. Or the person who smokes for decades and lives to be 90.

Oftentimes, it may seem that your walk with God is happening in a dry, rocky desert. Have you ever hiked in the wrong shoes? You can’t wear slides when you are traversing mile after mile on hard, rocky, uneven terrain. And as referenced in today’s verse, flint is one of the harder common stones found in the Holy Land. In fact, flint is what many used to fashion knives and cutting instruments, such as arrows. Flint was also used in circumcision. Yes, that hard and sharp.

With God, however, Moses was able to strike flint to form a fountain. Think about the driest place you’ve ever been. For me, it’s probably either Death Valley, California (less than 2 inches of rain per year), or the Dead Sea in Israel (about 2.5 inches per year). That’s what the Wilderness of Sin was like (current day Sinai). Temperatures that soar over 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. And then suddenly, water!

How audacious is our God that he would turn the flinty, hard areas of our lives into fountains of living water? Man of God, don’t curse the hard places, but instead acknowledge them, absorb the reality that only God can transform them, and then get out of the way so as not to block the flow of His living waters. That’s transformation—miraculous and amazing.

 

Lord, thank You that You turn the flint to fountains in my life. You are truly the miracle worker.