The Purpose of God's Dead Ends

“Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border: wherefore Israel turned away from him.” (Nu 20:21 AV)

A question arose in my mind.  If the LORD was leading them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of cloud by evening, why lead them to a dead end?  If Edom was not going to allow them passage, there was one of two ways it could go.  Either then conquer Edom and force their way through, or turn aside and go another way.  Edom was their half-brother.  Descendants from Isaac’s son Esau, they had a partial blessing from the fact they were of the seed from Abraham and Isaac.  Destroying them was not an option.  In fact, later in David’s reign, they governed Edom, but never destroyed them.  So, the only real option was to go another way.  The question remains.  If the LORD was leading them (and He was), why lead them in a direction that ended in a dead end?  What was it they learned?  Why did they need to learn it?

There were times when my father absolutely forbade me to hang with certain friends, and other times when he warned me, but allowed the relationship to continue.  He wanted me to learn that certain types of people are to be avoided.  That even though they say they are your friend, they really are not.  Keeping a watchful eye, he allowed me the liberty to learn by experience that his wisdom could be trusted.  The same is true of other choices I made.  Even though they were not in my best interest, my Dad still allowed me to make them so that I could learn by experience that it wasn’t the best of choices.  So, to, it is with the LORD.  I remember times when I tried to pursue other career choices.  In my early Christian life when there were no doors that seemed to be opened, I tried several times to go a different direction.  There was the time I felt the LORD might have called me to start a church in Toronto.  That never happened.  Then there was the time I felt the LORD might want me to go back to school and get an accredited degree.  My church payed the expenses to go out to a Midwest school only to realize I would have to start my academic career from scratch.  Then there was a time when I looked into joining the Air Force, but I was too old.  It reminds me of a mouse, running the obstacle course of a maze looking for the cheese at the end.

Why would the LORD allow a dead end?  Probably because there was something to learn that we could not learn any other way.  Israel quickly learned who their friends were and were not by wandering about for 40 years.  Just because something turns out to be a dead end doesn’t mean it wasn’t useful!  God has a plan and a dead end could be part of it.