Isaiah 63:10-14. Isaiah laments that the people have rebelled against God, and so God became their enemy, and "fought against them." But God relents and remembers the days of Moses. Isaiah asks where is the God who brought his people through the Red Sea? The one who put his holy Spirit in them? The one who led them through the desert, keeping them from stumbling? Where is the God who made a glorious name for himself by leading his people?

We always tend to romanticize the past - looking back and saying how much better it was then. But that is because we know how it turned out for the people in that time. We do not see the end of our story, but we see the end of theirs. God promises the same things to us as he did for them, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So, yes, God led his people out of Egypt and through the desert and, yes, that was amazing, and powerful, and showed how great his love is for his people. But in Isaiah's time, as the people are going through whatever they are going through, they see their struggles as God fighting against them. They recollect his protection in the desert and wish for that protection again, but they fail to remember all the suffering during the trek to the Promised Land.

Let's remember how it really happened for the people led out of Egypt. They were saved from slavery, and they immediately created a golden calf to worship. Moses had to plead for them to God over and over again - he acknowledged them as a "stiff-necked people." They suffered sickness, diease, and death in the desert; they were bitten by seraph serpents; they suffered periods of hunger and thirst; they were denied the Promised Land in their generation because of their ways, and they had to wander in the desert for forty years. At the time of each one of these things, as they were experiencing them, they felt like God was against them, and, in a way, he was. He had to get them ready for everything he wanted to give them.

This is true throughout history and for all of us. God is allowing or giving us our trials to make us stronger, to get us ready to receive his gifts and appreciate them. While we are in the midst of them, we feel like he is our enemy, fighting against us. He is fighting, but he's fighting against our fallen nature, our sin, our lack of trust and faith, and boy do we love to hang on to those things! So that's why the fight seems so hard, because we are not willing to surrender! Every single person has to go through this - it is the point of life. The journey of the Israelites from slavery and Egypt to the Promised Land is a metaphor for all of our lives, and all of history.

We are slaves to sin, we need to be saved, and we are, yet we keep rebelling, not trusting, doing our own thing, and so we keep suffering and wandering in the desert. But God is always with us, protecting us and getting us ready to eventually be led to the promised land - heaven. So keep looking forward and stop romanticizing the past!