Reference: Deuteronomy 8:7-10

For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;

A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

Deuteronomy 11:10-12 For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven:

11 A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.

If there was one flagship principle that God wanted Israel to learn before they were ushered into the Promised Land, it would be the lesson of trusting God for everything. It was going to be a moment-by-moment dependency on God.

I submit that there is no other scripture that captures this cardinal truth as the one mentioned above. The land that they left behind in spite of their cumulative hardships had one advantage – it had continuous supply of water due to the healthy flow of the River Nile. The water of the river was channelled into the fields of the people in Egypt and they irrigated the land with this ever available resource. It was pretty much straightforward and easy.

 However, the situation in the Promised Land was completely different. The Israelites had to completely depend upon the grace of rain for their crop, which supported their sustenance. They had to depend upon something over which they had no control. There could be rain or by the same token, there could be famine. They had to sow their seeds trusting God, often with tears in their eyes.

It definitely limited, for the inhabitants of the land, the power of human self reliance and it would develop in them a culture of faith.

It reduced them to a place of simple trust in the promise of God which he spoke within the same context: “My eyes are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.”

Remember, it is hard and it is no wonder that almost all of them wanted to return to Egypt. But the blessing of trusting God with a seemingly riskier proposition is bigger.

In Egypt, with the supply from the Nile, it is just a vegetable garden, but in the Promised Land, with rain from God, it is barley, wheat, vine, fig trees, pomegranates, olive and honey. It is always a blessing to trust the Lord even if it does not make sense in the natural. Amen!!