Since you asked...

Reader suggestion: take the verses you're reading and show how God is meeting you where you're at in life.

I started reading through the Bible again about two and a half years ago.

I'm in Joshua. The beginning of Joshua, actually.

As in the 6th book of the 66 books in the Bible.

I've taken lots of breaks to meditate on other passages, listen to sermons, or read devotional books. But mostly I just have a hard time reading scripture quickly. The English major in me can't help dissecting a sentence and thinking about the implications of a passage. I often find myself stuck on one verse for days and days before I'm ready to move on. There's a great good that comes from reading through the Bible more quickly (I did it once), which is to zoom out from the individual verses and see the intricate and overarching web of God's redemption throughout history.

But this is not that time. This time, I'm reading deliberately, and here's what God is teaching me and where He's meeting me in the truth of His Word:

In Joshua 1 (told you I was at the beginning), Joshua is appointed the new leader of Israel, and after 40 years of wandering in the desert, God is about to lead His people into Canaan--a promise He made to them 40 years earlier and one He kept by providing for them in the dessert over and over again. But here's the thing: God already promised Canaan to them, promised that they would have victory over the people who lived in the land, but the Israelites still had to fight. In fact, over 40, 000 men "fully armed" for battle went ahead of the Israelites (Joshua 4:13). The potential for conflict, war, fighting, and possibly even death must have been palpable because God tells Joshua--the leader--five times in four verses to "be strong and courageous" (Joshua 1:6-9), implying a great fear in the Israelites about what they would encounter on the other side. The victory was theirs, but they still had to fight.

So why does this matter?

For some reason, I often think that if God promises something to me then the path will be easy and obvious. Ha. I imagine that He will pluck me out of my current circumstances and place me gently and cleanly into green pastures where I'm supposed to be and I'll just enjoy the ride. Double ha. Both in my experience and in the Bible, it doesn't work that way. He does promise Canaan to us (ultimately in the promise of eternal life with Him and temporally in the thousand ways He's making us more like Him), but He doesn't promise ease or even perfect clarity.

Exhibit A: A dear friend died of cancer recently and I really, really just want (expect?) God to pluck me out of the grief, to make everything okay again, to bring her back. But. He's not doing that. Instead, He's walking WITH me through the ebb and flow of grief and teaching me to trust Him even when He doesn't make sense. And that has to be enough. And it's hard.

I want God's will to be easy. I want Him to do all the work and just let me enjoy the fruits, but I'm learning that the work, suffering, endurance, and patience that God asks of us in this world actually ushers in the fruit. Life from death. Light from darkness. Redemption from despair. The way of Jesus.

God alone does part the waters--the impossible somethings in our lives--but we still have to walk through the seabed trusting that He will keep His promise to get us to the other side. And He does. He always does.