Deuteronomy 8:4: “Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee. Neither did thy feet swell these forty years.”
When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings named them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
-Johnson Oatman Jr. –
Johnson Oatman was an ordained minister in the late 1800’s with a struggling congregation. He was well educated for the task of being a minister, but he could not seem to find much success as a minister and had to work a full time job as a clerk to support his family. At the age of 40 it appears he had accomplished little. He was trying to pastor a small church that refused any growth and despite his education, was working a low level job, just barely keeping a roof over the head of his family. Only one who has been a pastor could know the depths of discouragement one faces after spending 20 years devoting your life to a small congregation and seeing little, if any, results.
At the age of 40 Johnson Oatman took a good look at this life and certainly must have felt like Israel who spent forty years in the wilderness. While many of his classmates had gone to successful careers, Johnson Oatman still struggled with a small congregation, barely keeping food on the table for his family. But like Israel he had to pause and consider the things that you normally don’t think about. He had to realize that in those forty years his garment did not wax old, nor did his feet swell. You get so focused on your lack of blessing in the big picture and your failure to enter the Promised Land, which you overlook the many details that God did pour out his blessings. Johnson Oatman began to count his blessings, one by one. He saw a wife who loved him, children who were healthy and Godly, and a congregation, although small, were loyal and loved and respected him. As he began to add up all the little things God had blessed him with, he realized they added up to more than one big major blessing like a large, growing congregation.
As he entered his 40th year of life, he put these thoughts into the poem cited above which was later added to music and became one of the most popular hymns of the early 20th century. In the next 20 years Johnson Oatman left the wilderness, he wrote over 5,000 hymns and became one of the leading writers of hymns of his day. He also helped form a successful insurance company and, well, he still pastored a little church in Lumberton, New Jersey that refused to grow, although it had many visitors due to his fame as a song writer.
For forty years Israel wandered in the wilderness, not allowed to enter the Promised Land. God explained that this was done to chasten Israel as a father would chasten a child. Yet, as a father may chasten a child, he does not stop loving the child or caring for the child. He does not stop providing for the child or supporting the child. So too God may have chastened Israel but He never stopped loving them, caring for them, supporting them or providing for them. Yet, you don’t think of those things while being chastened.
God reminded them that their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet swell. Odd that God would miraculously provide in these areas. In their wanderings the children of Israel could have obtained the necessary material to make clothing. So their feet didn’t swell, what’s the big deal about that? Well the obvious thing is that God was watching out for even the most minor details of caring for his people. The word for garments is samal which is also a word for covering. The word for waxing old is balah which has the idea of losing vitality and usefulness. This idea of the clothes never wearing has a secondary meaning which would indicate that God’s covering of protection over his people never diminished after 40 years.
The word for swell is batsak which means soggy or doughy. When used to modify regal or feet, it is a picture of your pace being slowed due to fatigue. This is especially important to the elderly who had to keep up with the younger people who could walk faster and further. It is sort of like someone saying “My feet feel like lead.” In a sense God was keeping the people youthful despite the fact that they had aged forty years.
Here God is sort of making a play on words. He is saying that he has taken care of the little things that one may not even think about, like their clothes wearing out or even their feet swelling. But\ not only that, at the same time he shows that he has taken care of the larger things like His constant covering of protection, protecting them from the extreme dangers of the desert like storms, pestilence and depravation. Once more he kept their bodies youthful enough despite their age so they could keep up with each other while traveling.
I have often made the comment that I feel like I am in the wilderness. I feel like I am accomplishing so little, yet like Johnson Oatman, when I count my blessings one by one, I begin to see what the Lord has done. I realize I can continue my journey to the Promised Land, which for me is to enter the heart of God, because God is covering me and sustaining me to continue that journey. Sometimes during that journey you need to pause, look around and count the many blessings that you many not even have considered.
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