Anyone else in the middle of less than pleasant circumstances? Yeah, yeah, I know – global pandemic, major election cycle, hurricanes, economic uncertainty, protests against racial injustice, plus whatever trials you may be facing in your personal life – all perfectly normal, and not worth mentioning as unpleasant, right? (That’s tongue-in-cheek, to be clear.) Anyone else looking for the Lord to deliver, and wondering where He is? I was reading in Exodus over the last week, and it sounds like Moses knew a little bit about that.
After he fled from Egypt in fear for his life, after the Lord revealed Himself in the burning bush, after Moses protested (multiple times) that he wasn’t the right guy for the job, after he followed through and returned to Egypt anyway, after he obeyed the voice of the Lord, things become more uncomfortable, not just for him alone, but for all the Israelites. Right when we might expect life to start looking up – he had obeyed God after all – the exact opposite happened. Pharaoh piled the burdens on the Israelites, the Israelites accused Moses of giving Pharaoh an excuse to kill them, and we see Moses’ expression of doubt and frustration in Exodus 5:22-23: “Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.” Fortunately, we know the rest of the story (read the rest of Exodus if you don’t know it or need a refresher; I promise it moves quickly), and so we can look ahead a bit and learn from Moses and history here.
We can extract a couple different truths or principles from the rest of Exodus that hold a wealth of promise for us even today. First, we work and think and imagine on a human scale; whereas the Lord works wonders far greater than what we could imagine. I don’t know what Moses expected deliverance from slavery in Egypt to look like, but I somehow think it was perhaps more ordinary than a rash of plagues, an impoverishing of the entire Egyptian nation, and a harried escape on dry land through the middle of a sea, with the Egyptian army destroyed at the heels of the refugees. One of my favorite passages that reminds me of this is Ephesians 3:20, in which we’re told that the Lord is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. The Lord is powerful to deliver and to rescue.
Second, we often impose our human sense of timeliness on the Lord. We see that in Moses’ cry to the Lord, and I think it’s a clue that he expected deliverance to be immediate. Rarely does the Lord provide a clear answer immediately, or change circumstances instantaneously, and it’s no different here. There’s often a lesson to be learned in the waiting – usually one that involves trusting the Lord to follow through on His promises even if we don’t see or understand how it could happen….even if things get worse before they get better. Really, the entire book of Exodus – even the entire Bible – is an account of God keeping promises that He had made centuries before, promises that His people had had to just take on faith that He would one day bring to fruition.
I don’t know what the coming days, weeks, and months hold, for you, for me, for the nation, or the world. I do know, though, that the Lord has promised how things end. He’s promised to return in glory, to bring about the final subjugation of all nations, authorities, and powers to Himself, to put an end to all rebellion for eternity, and so much more. Though perhaps we don’t see at the moment how that will come about, though it may seem a little fantastical and too good to be true, though we think for a few minutes – or even for a long while – that the Lord has forgotten us, that He does not see the mischief and trouble around us, yet we can be confident that He does see, that He knows our suffering and hears our cries, and that He is faithful to deliver.
For further reading about the power and wonder of the Lord, consider Job 38-41, Isaiah 40, Romans 11:33-36.
An inspirational reminder that what we see and experience is certainly not all there is. I do often forget and need reminders like this to reawaken my long term faith and vision for the fulfillment of God’s promises. And God’s plan is not all about me or my community or country, but is about his power and glory over the whole earth and heavenly places. This devotional post is a great way to reset my mind to things above.
We all become impatient with God and wanting our answer now. We seem to forget what Moses and Job and others went through. Our vision of our life is so small compared to what God sees in us. He is always faithful, thanks for the reminder.