When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became His sanctuary, Israel His dominion. The sea looked and fled. Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. (Verses 1-4)
It was a brand new day for Israel when Pharaoh finally declared, "Go!" Millions of Jewish people packed up their belongings in carts and on pack animals, corralled their flocks, accepted the offerings of jewelry and other goods from the Egyptians who bade them leave so the plagues would cease. One day they were slaves, the next their feet stepped into freedom. What would they do with this opportunity to start anew in a promised land set aside for them by the God Who chose to journey with them?
I can't imagine the chaos of the change. Infants and elderly, healthy and weak, strong-willed and obsequious--such a crowd of contradictions. Led by one man and his brother. God in their midst. A pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day, He promised to get them through. And He did. With the Egyptian army at their heels, hope dimming, fear mounting, God Himself opened up the waters of the Red Sea so His dwelling place could cross it on dry land. How does one forget that miracle? The Egyptian army was drowned as the sea closed upon them, washing away chariots, horses, riders. It was God's plan His people were following. So why would they be surprised that He could tell the waters to stand up, then tell them to close? What He ordains, He sustains.
There was manna and water. For sure, there was a desert to cross. One step at a time. The journey should've taken only weeks. God didn't want a forty year wilderness experience. He would've taken them straight to the Promised Land but for one thing: disobedience. And God wasn't asking them to do difficult religious things. The children of Israel found waiting for Moses to come down from Mt. Sinai the most troubling of their experiences. To the degree that they made a calf out of their gold and worshipped it instead of God. Moses, of course, was never coming back down from his heights, and they wanted to party. For such a little thing, they lost their footing and their children had to wait out their deaths in order to receive all the promises they could've enjoyed.
The impressive thing about God in all of this to me, as I look into a new year and ponder 2014, is His commitment to us to move heaven and earth, mountains and water, leaders and kings, to accomplish His plan. Just like my salvation, one day I was a slave to sin, and the next I was set free and delivered from the enemy of my soul. One day I had no hope, the next I was a child of God the King. Many things in my life right now are open-ended with no answer in sight. I have no prescience concerning the outcomes. My earthly mind can't see how things will ever be any different. But God knows the exact month, day, hour and minute when He'll step in and part the seas and shake the mountains that stand in the way of what He has planned for me.
I was thinking in the night about the first big move our family made as a result of a new job Bill took. I was left in Texas to sell our home, the one we'd built thinking we'd be in it for the next twenty years or so, and Bill went on to Atlanta, Georgia, to start his job. The task for me took four months with many ups and downs. When we finally sold our home, it was a complicated deal. The person buying our home was selling his to a family friend. All the transactions had to work for our home to close escrow. The person buying our home was, to say the least, difficult. But we plodded through to what we thought was the end. We were to close the day the moving company sent a packer over early in the morning to help me get our life into boxes while corralling two small children. Mid-way through the morning, our house a destroyed mess of emptied cabinets and strewn linens and clothing, open suitcases and designated trash, the buyer's wife came knocking at my door. In her arms was a bedspread. We'd agreed she could have the red, white and blue one I had for the master. She brought her old one as a trade-off I'd not asked for. "We're not buying your house," she said. "But I wanted you to have this bedspread anyway."
"What?" Stunned beyond responding any other way.
"My husband doesn't think the deal we got on our house was good enough, so he backed out of that sale, which means we have to back out of this one." She was embarrassed. Visibly so, but she'd been sent on a mission.
"You can't do this." I grabbed her hand. "Pray with me right now that your husband will change his mind." Jesus, you know our situation. "In Jesus's name, Father we agree together that this man will change his mind and buy our house today." That was it. All I could come up with. And the woman walked away wagging the bedspread behind her.
But my heart wasn't finished. I knew God wanted our family together. I knew God could do anything. So, I grabbed the hand of the obviously confused packer. I still don't know whether she was a believer or not. At the moment it didn't matter. "I need you to agree with me in prayer." And I bowed my head and began before she could object. "Dear Jesus, make a way today. Change hearts and minds. Bill is on his way to come and get us, the packer is here, the van due tomorrow. And I don't see any way we can move if You don't intervene. Please help us!"
I dropped her hand, took a deep breath and looked into her astonished face. "Thank you," I said.
"Uh..." she began, "do you want me to keep on packing?"
"Yes." It was a wavering affirmative, but I trusted God would somehow answer the prayer.
Bill arrived from the airport. I told him of our dilemma. We prayed together in the late afternoon with our house packed up around us. There was a knock on the door around four. It was our realtor with a check in her hands. The home closed. On time. She'd given the buyer back some of her commission because she loved us. That's what she said. Because she loved us. We could begin a new season of our lives because our God loved us through our realtor. Parted a sea. Shook a mountain. Set us free.
When things seem hopeless, stuck in idle or even sliding backward, we know that in a moment, God's millisecond, it can all change. Mary was oblivious to her calling until the exact moment Gabriel made her aware that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was born into a world primarily incognizant of the import. One minute the God of heaven, the next the Son of Man. We can live in hope. Because we have an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God Who cares about and intervenes in the most intimate and exhausting details of our lives in order to complete in us that which He has created us to do and be. So, for 2014, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus! (Philippians 3). I expect my Father to make a way where there is no way. My only job? Obey. Happy, blessed, and purposeful New Year!
It was a brand new day for Israel when Pharaoh finally declared, "Go!" Millions of Jewish people packed up their belongings in carts and on pack animals, corralled their flocks, accepted the offerings of jewelry and other goods from the Egyptians who bade them leave so the plagues would cease. One day they were slaves, the next their feet stepped into freedom. What would they do with this opportunity to start anew in a promised land set aside for them by the God Who chose to journey with them?
I can't imagine the chaos of the change. Infants and elderly, healthy and weak, strong-willed and obsequious--such a crowd of contradictions. Led by one man and his brother. God in their midst. A pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day, He promised to get them through. And He did. With the Egyptian army at their heels, hope dimming, fear mounting, God Himself opened up the waters of the Red Sea so His dwelling place could cross it on dry land. How does one forget that miracle? The Egyptian army was drowned as the sea closed upon them, washing away chariots, horses, riders. It was God's plan His people were following. So why would they be surprised that He could tell the waters to stand up, then tell them to close? What He ordains, He sustains.
There was manna and water. For sure, there was a desert to cross. One step at a time. The journey should've taken only weeks. God didn't want a forty year wilderness experience. He would've taken them straight to the Promised Land but for one thing: disobedience. And God wasn't asking them to do difficult religious things. The children of Israel found waiting for Moses to come down from Mt. Sinai the most troubling of their experiences. To the degree that they made a calf out of their gold and worshipped it instead of God. Moses, of course, was never coming back down from his heights, and they wanted to party. For such a little thing, they lost their footing and their children had to wait out their deaths in order to receive all the promises they could've enjoyed.
The impressive thing about God in all of this to me, as I look into a new year and ponder 2014, is His commitment to us to move heaven and earth, mountains and water, leaders and kings, to accomplish His plan. Just like my salvation, one day I was a slave to sin, and the next I was set free and delivered from the enemy of my soul. One day I had no hope, the next I was a child of God the King. Many things in my life right now are open-ended with no answer in sight. I have no prescience concerning the outcomes. My earthly mind can't see how things will ever be any different. But God knows the exact month, day, hour and minute when He'll step in and part the seas and shake the mountains that stand in the way of what He has planned for me.
I was thinking in the night about the first big move our family made as a result of a new job Bill took. I was left in Texas to sell our home, the one we'd built thinking we'd be in it for the next twenty years or so, and Bill went on to Atlanta, Georgia, to start his job. The task for me took four months with many ups and downs. When we finally sold our home, it was a complicated deal. The person buying our home was selling his to a family friend. All the transactions had to work for our home to close escrow. The person buying our home was, to say the least, difficult. But we plodded through to what we thought was the end. We were to close the day the moving company sent a packer over early in the morning to help me get our life into boxes while corralling two small children. Mid-way through the morning, our house a destroyed mess of emptied cabinets and strewn linens and clothing, open suitcases and designated trash, the buyer's wife came knocking at my door. In her arms was a bedspread. We'd agreed she could have the red, white and blue one I had for the master. She brought her old one as a trade-off I'd not asked for. "We're not buying your house," she said. "But I wanted you to have this bedspread anyway."
"What?" Stunned beyond responding any other way.
"My husband doesn't think the deal we got on our house was good enough, so he backed out of that sale, which means we have to back out of this one." She was embarrassed. Visibly so, but she'd been sent on a mission.
"You can't do this." I grabbed her hand. "Pray with me right now that your husband will change his mind." Jesus, you know our situation. "In Jesus's name, Father we agree together that this man will change his mind and buy our house today." That was it. All I could come up with. And the woman walked away wagging the bedspread behind her.
But my heart wasn't finished. I knew God wanted our family together. I knew God could do anything. So, I grabbed the hand of the obviously confused packer. I still don't know whether she was a believer or not. At the moment it didn't matter. "I need you to agree with me in prayer." And I bowed my head and began before she could object. "Dear Jesus, make a way today. Change hearts and minds. Bill is on his way to come and get us, the packer is here, the van due tomorrow. And I don't see any way we can move if You don't intervene. Please help us!"
I dropped her hand, took a deep breath and looked into her astonished face. "Thank you," I said.
"Uh..." she began, "do you want me to keep on packing?"
"Yes." It was a wavering affirmative, but I trusted God would somehow answer the prayer.
Bill arrived from the airport. I told him of our dilemma. We prayed together in the late afternoon with our house packed up around us. There was a knock on the door around four. It was our realtor with a check in her hands. The home closed. On time. She'd given the buyer back some of her commission because she loved us. That's what she said. Because she loved us. We could begin a new season of our lives because our God loved us through our realtor. Parted a sea. Shook a mountain. Set us free.
When things seem hopeless, stuck in idle or even sliding backward, we know that in a moment, God's millisecond, it can all change. Mary was oblivious to her calling until the exact moment Gabriel made her aware that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was born into a world primarily incognizant of the import. One minute the God of heaven, the next the Son of Man. We can live in hope. Because we have an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God Who cares about and intervenes in the most intimate and exhausting details of our lives in order to complete in us that which He has created us to do and be. So, for 2014, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus! (Philippians 3). I expect my Father to make a way where there is no way. My only job? Obey. Happy, blessed, and purposeful New Year!
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