Just Rest

Book excerpt: Winner of a second-place award in the popular scripture studies category from the Catholic Media Association. The desert wanderings of the Chosen People—and the spiritual lessons and encouragement they offer to us today—come alive in scripture teacher Sonja Corbitt’s five-week Bible study on the Exodus account. This dynamic study will help you to apply the spiritual lessons of the Exodus into your own life, identify areas of desolation and need, and better understand God’s greater purposes in times of adversity and dryness. In so doing, you will experience what it means to invite Jesus to nourish your spirit and guide you to the kingdom promised to all who enter into his rest. Breaking open both the Exodus and overview of it found in Hebrews 3–4, Corbitt shows how the event is also a powerful metaphor for the spiritual life: everything we need—spiritual, emotional, and physical rest and replenishment—is found not at the end of our journey but in the desert itself. .Everything God desires for us may be found in the “Dew of Heaven,” Jesus. Corbitt reveals that the heavenly sustenance God provided to the Chosen People in the desert is available to us today if we open ourselves to it. Whatever your questions, you will find the answers you seek as you come to understand how God delivered the Chosen People from their waywardness and blessed them with everything they needed to reach the Promised Land. And he will do the same for us if we ask. Each of the five chapters of this study explores a different facet of the desert experience: rest in the wandering—God’s ways are desert ways: entering the desert; thoughts at rest: testing in the desert; emotions at rest: conquering the desert; body and spirit at rest: emerging from the desert; and the blessings of rest: entering the Promised Land. Each chapter contains summary points, an invitation to respond, and Corbitt’s LOVE the Word lectio exercises.