What do you know about camels?
Let’s take a quiz.
Where does a camel store water?
How many sets of eyelids does a camel have?
What is unusual about a camel’s nostrils?
How much water can a camel drink in 13 minutes?
Camels are by no means small creatures, weighing as much as 1,500 pounds and standing at 7 feet at the hump. The hump in itself is a good size storing up to 80 pounds of fat. This fat provides them with nutrients to live on when they need food in the desert. I bet you thought the hump stored water. Well, that’s what I thought until I did some investigating. So where do they store water and how much can they drink? Camels can drink up to 30 gallons of water in 13 minutes! That’s some fast drinking, isn’t it? Where does all that water go? The water is stored in their blood.
Now, regarding their eyelids, how many eyelids did you guess a camel has? One? Two? How about three! As protection against the sand, a camel not only has three sets of eyelids but also two sets of eyelashes. No wonder their eyelashes look so full! The camel’s nostrils have a special desert feature as well. When a sandstorm comes, they simply shut them closed.1 Whether it is the heat, sand or lack of food and water, God prepared a camel to survive it all!
Camels aren’t the only ones God prepared to survive the desert wilderness.
Centuries ago, God prepared the Israelites to survive in the desert wilderness as well. Unlike the camels, their energy for survival wasn’t fat, but memories. The memories of what God had done.
The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years. After all the years of bondage, many had lost faith that the Hebrew God would rescue them. Many had probably lost their belief in Him altogether and turned to the gods of Egypt. God knew their hearts and rebuilt their faith. Before the Israelites escaped from their bondage in Egypt, God sent 10 plagues. Each plague could be associated with an Egyptian god or goddess.
Could it be that God was targeting the Egyptian deities to show that He was the only true God?
For at this time I will send all My plagues to your very heart, and on your servants and on your people, that you may know that there is none like Me in all the earth,
Exodus 9:14.
Imagine the faith in God that grew within each Israelite as God struck Egypt with the 10 plagues:
Water became blood, Frogs, Gnats,
Flies, Livestock pestilence, Boils,
Hail, Locus, Darkness,
Death of the Firstborn.
Over and over again, the Israelites were untouched by the plagues while the Egyptians suffered.
God not only showed His power over the Egyptian deities, but stored those memories in the hearts and minds of His people. These memories prepared them for their exodus from Egypt, (Exodus chapters 5-12), through their desert journey to the promised land.
As this season of Passover approaches, Jews around the world will remember what God has done. They will remember by the retelling of the story of the exodus at a Passover Seder as God commanded,
You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, that is, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), that you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life, Deuteronomy 16:3.
Year after year, through this remembrance, God is storing the memories of His power and His faithfulness to His promises, in the hearts and minds of generations of Jews.
We may not walk through the Sinai desert, but we do walk through deserts in our lives.
I am referring to those times when we encounter physical, spiritual or emotional struggles that make us feel like we are stuck in the middle of a wilderness desert. Many are walking through those wilderness deserts now with all the social distancing and upheaval in our country.
So, what are we to do when we encounter a wilderness desert?
We, like the Israelites, can remember what God has done.
Are there memories that you have stored up for your desert times?
Perhaps you have stored memories of what God has done for you, what He has done for others and what He has done in the scriptures.
If you still feel you are short of memories, consider a time when you received a smile or a call just when you needed encouragement. Or how about an occasion when something did not appear that it would work out, but then it did. Our loving Heavenly Father works in both subtle and dramatic ways.
Tapping into those stored memories will energize our faith in our desert times,
just like the camels stored fat energizes them for their desert journey.
But the camel needs to store more than fat, he needs stored life-giving water to see him through the desert.
We too, need more than mere memories to see us through our desert times.
We need life-giving water to sustain us.
The life-giving water of Jesus.
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life,” John 4:13-14.
When we believe in Jesus and ask Him to come into our life, the water Jesus gives is not physical, but spiritual.
On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive, John 7:37-39a
REFLECTION
What memories do you have stored that can energize your faith?
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, in this desert time, as I write Isaiah 58:11 and say it aloud, help me to rely on You. Bring to my remembrance the examples of what You have done, Your love for me, Your faithfulness and Your promises. Please energize my faith and surround me with Your love.
The Lord will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. Isaiah 58:11
Remembering what God has done and relying on His living water, will give us faith to sustain us even in the desert wilderness.
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1Camel facts; Britannica.com, Softschools.com, Nationalgeographic.com
Frog photo by Drew Brown, unsplash
Desert photo by Tijs Van Leur, unsplash
Waterfall photo by Kyle Peyton, unsplash
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