Ezekiel 29:6–7: “Then all the inhabitants of Egypt / Shall know that I am the LORD, / Because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. / When they took hold of you with the hand, / You broke and tore all their shoulders; / When they leaned on you, / You broke and made all their backs quiver.”

September 22nd, 2021 by Pastor Ed in devotional

The reeds that grew by the Nile River in Egypt are what we in California would call bamboo. It may look like it would make a good staff or crutch, but it is actually quite brittle and shatters easily. The image here is of a crutch under your arms shattering once weight is put on it and the broken pieces going into your shoulder. God was warning His people against putting weight on the nation of Egypt to save them. The leadership of Jerusalem was trusting in the support of Pharaoh and his Egyptian troops to rescue them from Babylon, but history tells us the Babylonians soundly defeated the Egyptian army. Pharaoh was no support and became a shattered crutch to Judah, just as God had warned.

There are so many unreliable crutches people turn to in life. We think of popularity, alcohol, drugs, wealth, and position, all of which prove too weak in the end. They will not support us when a doctor says, “You have aggressive cancer with perhaps as little as 6 weeks to live.” All man-made crutches fail when that kind of weight is put on them. Only God is able to carry a person through a crisis of that magnitude, and not just survive it, but grow to become more like Him through it. We must continually resist the temptation to rely on something or someone other than God for the issues of each new day. C.S. Lewis said, “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing yet had been done.”

“LORD, we confess that You and You alone are reliable, faithful, and true. We look to You to lead and guide us through this day.”