Most couples who have been married a while can describe the first place. The one-bedroom flat with the fridge in the living room because the kitchen was too small. The bed that was a mattress on the floor for the first six months. The settee from a church sister who was moving. The winter the heating broke, or the summer the water was off every afternoon. The month you ate a great deal of rice and tinned mackerel and told nobody.
At the time, it felt like a wilderness. Looking back, many people describe it differently. Something happened in that flat that did not happen anywhere else.
Forty years, and nothing lacking
The book of Deuteronomy is Moses speaking to a people at the edge of the promised land. They are about to have houses they did not build and vineyards they did not plant. Before they cross, he asks them to remember the years without any of it:
“The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything.” (Deuteronomy 2:7, NIV)
It is a bold claim. Israel had grumbled about food and water constantly during those years. They had not felt that they lacked nothing. But from the edge of the Jordan, Moses could see the pattern they had missed: manna every morning, water from the rock, a God who watched every step.
A few chapters later he adds a detail that anyone who has lived on very little will appreciate: “Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years” (Deuteronomy 8:4, NIV). Not new clothes. The same ones, lasting.
What the lean years teach
Moses also explains why the wilderness happened: to humble them and to test them, “to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3, NIV). Jesus quoted those same words in his own wilderness (Matthew 4:4).
Families who have lived through lean years in small homes often name similar lessons:
- They learned to talk about money honestly, because there was no room to hide it.
- They learned the difference between wants and needs.
- They learned to receive help, and later, to give it.
- They learned to pray about groceries, rent and bus fare, and to notice the answers.
- They discovered that joy was possible in two rooms.
None of this makes poverty good, or the wilderness pleasant. Some lean seasons are made harder by injustice, and God cares about that too. But many people come out of those years with a kind of faith they could not have learned in comfort.
The danger of the better house
Moses’ strongest warning is not about the wilderness at all. It is about what comes after. “When you have eaten and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down… then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 8:12–14, NIV).
It is strangely easy to forget the flat once you have the house. The kitchen is big now, the bedrooms are many, the fridge is where a fridge should be. The lessons of the lean years can fade. We begin to think the house came from our hard work alone. We lose patience with young couples who are struggling. We stop praying about groceries because we don’t need to.
Remembering is a spiritual discipline. It might mean keeping one item from that first flat — a pot, a lamp, the old settee cushion — and telling the children its story. It might mean driving past the old building once a year and saying a prayer of thanks. It might mean making sure that the young couple at church who have just moved into their own mattress-on-the-floor flat get a visit, a meal, and a word that says: we were there too, and God kept us.
If you are still in the flat
Perhaps you are reading this in the lean years now, and the looking back feels a long way off. Deuteronomy 2:7 is still for you. “He has watched over your journey” is written in the past tense, but it was true all along, even when the people could not see it. Every step in this season is watched. The flat is not forgotten. Neither are you.
For reflection
- What did you learn in a lean season that you might not have learned any other way?
- What practice could help you remember, now that things may be easier?
- Who near you is in their own wilderness, and how could you walk with them?
A prayer: Lord, you watched over every step in the small places. Thank you for bread on the table when there was little, and for the lessons I learned there. Keep me from forgetting you in easier days, and help me to be for someone else what others were for me. Amen.
