And the first thing He says is, "I am sending an angel ahead of you..." When I read that, I couldn't help feeling that I also wished I had an angel to help me. I sometimes feel so alone in this process of trying to find a new home. When you think about it, it's not something that people normally do alone. Finding a home is something that's normally done as a group, as a couple or as a family. Having an angel to lead the way would be just wonderful!
I thought back to the many times in my life that I needed to find accommodation... from the very first time as an 18-year old when I and a couple of friends were going to University and looking for student accommodation for our years in Glasgow. In France, in Austria, in South Africa... I remembered that there had always been others involved in my house hunting: friends or missionary colleagues who shared the task of finding a place and making it into a home.
The only time I was truly alone in the search was when I was first moving to Spain in 2008. As you may have read in the posts below, God's answer that time was to provide a house mate for my first season in a new country. In some ways, that probably seems like the most obvious solution this time round too... But there's a big difference between finding a stranger as a room mate when you're a student in your twenties and trying to do the same thing when you're in your sixties. It makes me feel incredibly vulnerable at this stage of life to think of having to share a home with a stranger - who very probably wouldn't have the same values or lifestyle as I do. (I guess that's what it's like for elderly people who finish their life in a nursing home, having to share a home and maybe even a room with some other old person that they've never met before.)
And so that's what made me feel today that I need an angel - obviously not as a housemate, but simply so that I don't feel so alone in the whole process of finding a new home. Exodus 23: 20 said that the angel would protect them on their journey, would lead them safely and would guide them to the place that God had already prepared for them.
I choose to believe that God has prepared a place for me this year - even if finding it doesn't feel particularly straightforward at the moment. I know that He can guide and protect me on the journey, and I find security in knowing that nothing is impossible for Him.
