God at the Crossroads

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Elisa Morgan, and I titled today's reading God at the Crossroads. After days of illness and then spiking a high temperature, it was clear that my husband needed emergency care. The hospital admitted him immediately.

One day folded into the next. He improved, but not enough to be released. I faced the difficult choice to stay with my husband or fulfill an important work trip where many people and projects were involved. My husband assured me that he'd be fine, but my heart was torn between him and my work. God's people needed His help at the crossroads of life's decisions. Far too often, they hadn't adhered to His revealed instructions, and so Moses implored the people to choose life by following His commands. Later, the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah chapter 6, offered words of direction to God's wayward people, wooing them to follow His ways, saying, Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths.

Ask where the good way is and walk in it. The ancient paths of Scripture and God's past provision can direct us. I imagined myself at a physical crossroads and applied Jeremiah's template of wisdom. My husband needed me. So did my work.

Just then my supervisor called and encouraged me to remain home. I drew a breath in and thanked God for His provision at the crossroads. God's direction doesn't always come so clearly, but it does come.

When we stand at the crossroads, let's make sure to look for Him. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 15 to 20. See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws. Then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.

You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land He swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Let's pray. Dear God, when we're uncertain, help us to stand at the crossroads and look for Your provision. In Jesus' name we pray.