
As I’ve ever so carefully lifted the lid off the readings today it’s as if so much has come falling out that I’ve been knocked over and over whelmed by it. So In a kind of close my eyes and drop a pin I’ve been drawn to the Israelites in the desert wondering if in fact they have been “duped” by a God who promised freedom, and well, tbh it didn’t look exactly look as they had imagined.
It doesn’t take the hindsight of centuries of deep thinking theologians, to know that God not only had to take the Israelites out of Egypt, but He had to take Egypt out of the hearts of the Israelites. Slavery often comes in the guise of a comfort blanket.
There is great mistrust in Gods provision, the years under the influence of Egypt’s gods have stained their souls, they no longer know the God of Abraham.
Skip forward a few thousand years and here we are in the grip of a pandemic. No advance notice to sacrifice a spotless lamb and use His body and blood for sure salvation….oh but wait.
I have an extraordinary sense of peace about all this, it has no earthly rationality and I can’t explain why, but I know God is moving. I know that where each one of us is tormented by thirst, and looking heavenward thinking “why have you brought us here ?” We are being invited into a place of trust, to shift our hearts from what we don’t have to what we are being given. It’s a call to shift our desires from foreign gods to what really matters Him and each other.
The time of change is a fearful one, and the slavery we are leaving behind can seem appealing in the interim.
But always He provides, there will be a rock, and it will be struck and it will bring the relief we have prayed for….and all will believe, not because they have heard about it but because they have seen for themselves and they will know He really is the saviour of the world.