I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 12th of March, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. 

We start in the Book of Deuteronomy 1:2-3, in the Old Testament: 

“It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea. Now it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him as commandments to them,…” 

The Children of Israel took 40 years to complete an 11-day journey. We are slow learners. They had to go on that same trip time and time again until they learned the lessons that God was teaching them. Isn’t that the same with you and me today, my dear friend? We want to do everything quickly, and then we have to come back and do it again and again. 

My wife’s old dad was a steam engineer by profession. In those days, everything was driven by steam - steam railway engines, steamships on the sea, and steam engines. He told me that when he was a young student, the first thing he had to do was to make his own tools. He didn’t buy them, he had to make them. He was an incredible man to have on the farm in his old age. I would have an emergency, a breakdown when I was planting my crops, and I would go to the Spares Department in town at the garage and they would say, “It can only come in two weeks time.” I would go back desperately and see him at his house, and I would say, “Dad, this thing is broken. Can you help me?” He would remake it himself and I would be back in business within hours. 

I remember sometimes I was quite intimidated by him. He would come down to the workshop and I would be frantically trying to use a hacksaw and saw a piece of pipe and going flat out with it, just sawing in the middle of the saw-blade, and he would put his hand on my shoulder and say, “When you bought that hacksaw blade, you paid for the whole blade. Use the saw from end to end, not just back and forwards in the middle.” And he was quite right. We mustn’t be afraid to take time to learn.  

I love to go down to our neighbour’s farm. He has got an oak plantation. This oak plantation must be about 100 to 150 years old. I love to go into that oak plantation and am quiet in the presence of God, and I am surrounded by trees that have taken 150 years to grow. It makes me feel good and secure. We need to learn our lessons well. If we don’t, the Lord will take us back to that same thing that we are not achieving because He loves us and He wants us to succeed. 

God bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.