turn back–it’s the plan!

We don’t like to backtrack, as a general rule. People like to move forward. There is something about the feeling of progress and accomplishment that we love. Life needs to be about going ahead and often we don’t look back. Maybe because where we have been was not so good, or maybe because it was too good and we don’t want the pain of remembering what we’ve left there. Or maybe it’s just the dream of what might be coming up if we could just keep moving. Whatever our reason, we aren’t fond of turning around and revisiting old ground.

 

Why does it feel like a defeat if we have to go back and retrace steps? Why do we expect to always get it right the first time? Why do we think that once we’ve “been there” a place no longer holds value for us?

 

The Israelites leaving Egypt are about to learn—and hopefully we will learn with them—that for God, straight lines and continual forward progress isn’t always the way to do things. In fact, as we saw in the last chapter of Exodus, sometimes God leads us in the long way around.

 

The Israelites have barely made it out of Pharaoh’s gaze in Exodus 14. Their journey has just now begun and already God is calling for a retreat? Already calling for them to turn back?

 

Then the Lord gave these instructions to Moses: ”Order the Israelites to turn back and camp by Pi-hahiroth between Migdol and the sea. Camp there along the shore, across from Baal-zephon. Then Pharaoh will think, `The Israelites are confused. They are trapped in the wilderness!’ And once again I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after you. I have planned this in order to display my glory through Pharaoh and his whole army. After this the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord!” So the Israelites camped there as they were told.        Exodus 14:1-4

 

To be fair, it’s not a full retreat. He isn’t cancelling the trip. He’s just calling on them to retrace some steps and camp at a spot he is identifying. Now I don’t know about you, but when I go on a trip the last thing I want to hear right after getting started is that we have to go back. I don’t want to stop at all, but turn back? Please no!

 

God is gracious enough to give an explanation. He doesn’t always do that, but here he does and he explains that Pharaoh is once again going to change his mind and come after them. So God wants them by the sea where he can display his glory—and protect them in the process.

 

Had they not turned back and been by the sea they would not have had the experience of passing through the sea on dry ground. Had they not turned back and retraced their steps they would not have been where God wanted them in order to display his glory through them.

 

Sometimes in order to go forward we must go back.

 

I wonder how often I am so bent on pressing forward to something new that I miss what God has. There is such a predisposition we have to moving on to the next thing that sometimes we can fail to see that the next thing was also the last thing. Sometimes we have to retrace our steps.

 

This weekend my family is moving to a new home. For us this is a new thing, but it’s also a retracing of steps. We are moving out of the suburbs and into the heart of the city we have grown to love. We’ve never lived in the heart of this city before, but we know what it is to live in the city. We’ve been here before. The landscape is somewhat different here and the culture and the geography, but it’s still the city. For us, it’s a retracing of steps to places we’ve been before. Things we have lived and people groups we have known.

 

Two years ago had you asked I would have said, “No, we did that before and we loved it, but it’s not where we are now, it’s not something we can do again.” And yet here we are, retracing steps. Going forward and yet also turning back. Sometimes in order to go forward we have to go back. It’s the way of God. Turning back is sometimes in the plan right from the beginning.

 

the roundabout way

 

Do you ever look back on the journey of your life, at the ways in which you got where you are today and just wonder: How did I get here from there? For most—if not all of us—our life hasn’t consisted in a straight line trajectory of point A to point B and then on to point C. Sometimes my adult life has felt more like I started at point Q and the proceeded to point F only to then move on to point W. And next? Probably point B. When I look at where I have been, where I am now, and where I could go, it certainly doesn’t seem that this journey has been decided by efficiency. At times it’s seemed like little more than going in circles.

 

This is just the way of God. He takes us, not by the fastest or shortest way, but instead he takes us the best way. Best meaning what meets our needs, what shapes us where we need shaping; the way that teaches us and pummels us when necessary. He takes us by the way of abundant living not easy living. 

 

God loves to take the roundabout way.

 

When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest route to the Promised Land. God said, “If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea. Thus the Israelites left Egypt like an army ready for battle.            Exodus 13:17-18

 

This roundabout way is scenic at first. It’s nice to feel like we aren’t racing to get there (wherever “there” is), but are just moving along, enjoying the journey. But our nature leans towards impatience and soon this becomes frustrating. We just want to be there already!

 

It’s easy to get angry and agitated with God. To wonder why everything we want—and especially the things we think he wants for us—take so long to get here. If this is what God wants for me then why doesn’t he just make it happen?!

 

Because God knows what we need.

 

Do you honestly think that God wanted to take the Israelites the long way around? These were not the best road trip companions! Do you really think God wanted them to go through all the waywardness and major mistakes they were about to experience in their long and seemingly unending journey through the desert? Of course not. But this is what they needed. They need it here at the outset, and they need the trip extended later when they get their first chance to enter the promised land.

 

God is not in the business of giving us what we will like. He gives us what we need. Because God loves us too much to give us only what makes the temporary fun. He is in the business of the eternal.

 

The eternal has time for us to take the roundabout way.

 

keep listening

What do we do when life gets worse instead of better? What happens when we feel and believe that God is about to turn things around and we’re sure he promised he would and then, well, he doesn’t. Things get worse. The pain gets more intolerable. The relationships divide further. The money problems get bigger. What do we do then? What happens when we put all our hope in God doing something—something he said he would do—and then things go further in the wrong direction?

 

Flounder. That’s usually what we do. Struggle. Give up or in our out. We doubt, we hurt, we question. We stop trusting.

 

So Moses told the people of Israel what the Lord had said, but they refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery. Exodus 6:9

 

We are just like the Israelites. Time may have separated us, cultures and mindsets may be completely changed, but we are no different. They refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged. For them it was their slavery, admittedly far worse than anything most of us will face in life. But for us it’s usually circumstantial as well. We become to discouraged by our suffering, our mistreatment, our sense of unwanted-ness. Maybe it’s our fear, our repeated failures, our lack of having our own needs met in our relationships. We become discouraged by our questions that go unanswered, our pursuits that go unresolved, our friendships that are broken.

 

The list goes on and on. Things happen and we become discouraged. Nothing wrong with this. Life is sometimes discouraging. But we stop listening to what God is saying; stop trusting that he is working; stop running after the ways that he’s leading.

 

Why? Because things went badly? Because we thought he was coming to rescue and instead it felt like he turned and went the other way?

 

The Israelites just knew God wasn’t coming because the immediate things got harder. And after all, if God is going to do a miracle, won’t it be instantaneous? It took Moses forty years in the desert of Midain just to be ready to come to the Israelites so I’m thinking maybe we are too short-term focused, too oriented to immediate gratification.

 

Whatever you are in, wherever you find your self, how ever discouraging it is, hang in there. Keep listening, God is speaking. Keep looking, God is moving. Keep trusting, God hears your cries for help and he is concerned. He is coming. Maybe not as soon as you’d like, but he is knows where you are and he cares.

 

You can be sure that I have heard the groans of the people of Israel, who are now slaves to the Egyptians. And I am well aware of my covenant with them.
  ”Therefore, say to the people of Israel: `I am the Lord. I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment. I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt.       Exodus 6:5-7

 

eternal

“What if they want to know who you are? What if they want to know who is sending me?”

 

These seem like good questions. Moses isn’t being unreasonable here (Exodus 3:13). He is just thinking ahead. What should he say if he goes to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and is challenged about who this God is? And so he asks and God responds with that famous and somewhat enigmatic name: I Am. Or in some translations, “I Am who I Am.”

 

God is saying, among other things that he is God of the now. He isn’t bound by time. He isn’t the God who was. He is now, where we are, when we are. He is God of every day and every time. God of every moment.

This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.       Exodus 3:15

 

God is eternal. I don’t think I fully appreciate what that means. I want to, but it’s so other than everything I am familiar with. There is no context in my life for something with no beginning; something that will have no end or completion point. Everything I know and relate to wasn’t at some point…and then it was. Everything I know of will eventually pass away and become a “was” and a memory.

 

Except God. He is. He always is. A thousand years ago God is. A million years from now God is. This makes my brain hurt. God is not simply bigger than this moment I am living in. He is bigger than all moments, bigger than time. He is, no matter when. He always is.

 

God is eternal and if ever there was a thing about God that made him bigger and beyond us it is this. We are so confined by time and place and the present. We are so temporary and so now. God transcends it all. And perhaps the most amazing thing of all is that one day, at some moment in time we will be yanked out of time as well. We will exist in the eternal where God is. A where that isn’t really anywhere, but is everywhere.

 

It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.            1 Corinthians 15:52-53

 

It seems odd to wait in time for a moment in that time where time will be stripped away. And yet I wait. Anxiously wondering when forever will finally arrive. Why is it so slow in coming? Why does the eternal take so long to start?

 

In the meantime I will wait and wonder at the eternal God who makes the way out of time possible. His name is eternal because he is eternal. He is the God of every moment and he is not swayed or changed by the passing of time. Trying to comprehend this makes my head and my heart soar.

 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.    Hebrews 13:8

 

you are here

But Moses protested to God, “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?” God answered, “I will be with you. And this is your sign that I am the one who has sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.”        Exodus 3:12

 

Does this bother anyone else? Do you notice the glaring issue here? Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but I don’t think so.

 

Moses protests God’s call for him to go and lead Israel out of its slavery and Moses objects. Not at the notion of freeing the Israelites, he objects at the idea of leading the charge. He doesn’t feel adequate. God’s answer is both brilliant and frustrating.

 

God replies with, “I will be with you.”

 

These are great words. These are encouraging words and I could go on and on about them if it weren’t for what’s distracting me. This isn’t all God says…

 

“And this is your sign that I am the one who has sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.”

 

And this is your sign…Great! I like signs! I like proof! Tangible guarantees are always welcome…when you have brought the people out…wait, is that a sign? That’s not what I think of when I think of a sign. That’s definitely not what I want when I am being called to do something scary or difficult. I want a sign like Gideon gets in Judges 6. I want a miracle, or a voice, or an arrow of some kind pointing the way before I go about doing whatever it is I’m going to be doing.

 

But God calls this a sign when it’s an after the fact event? I don’t like it.

 

Granted in Exodus 4 God does give Moses a couple of other signs. Primarily because Moses just keeps arguing (we’ll get into that in the days to come), but I was struck this morning by God’s intention to not give Moses a sign until after he had obeyed.

 

I don’t like this, but I do know this. It would be great to always get signs from God about the choices we are going to make. It would be easier if God would always do something miraculous to make everything clear before we start moving. The fact is this isn’t usually how he does things. Or maybe I should clarify. Usually the biggest sign we get from God is the calling itself. The burden on our hearts, the constant heaviness of mind, the compelling sense that we should go in a certain direction and do a certain thing. The praying that only leads to more certainty within that this is the right path. These are often the best signs we get…until we are on the other side.

 

When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this very mountain.

 

Following God is a life filled with living by faith. We don’t have the luxury of a whole lot of sings. Sometimes the only sign we will get is the “You are here” at the end of it all. Instead we get promises: promises of the connections with God to come. Promises of the fact that God will be with us. Promises that he will guide our steps, light our path, and have more than enough grace for all our short-comings. And promises from God sometimes have to be enough. This is a life of faith after all. Trust in our Caller is sometimes all we have for ensuring that we will see the sign…on the other side.

 

For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!”         2 Corinthians 1:20

 

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*arrow on the road photo by sardinelly

burning bushes

Moses and the burning bush. It’s one of the Bible classics. One of those stories we teach the kids. A bush on fire that doesn’t burn up. God revealing himself in such a peculiar manner. It’s a great story of the lengths God will go to in order to get our attention.

 

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up. ”This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.”
   When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
  ”Here I am!” Moses replied.

 Exodus 3:2-5

 

Rabbi’s have long loved to ponder the question of just how long the bush remained there burning before Moses took notice. Was it only a minute? Had it been burning for days? The questions leads to a more personal one for each of us. What are the burning bushes in my own life?

 

Has God been trying to speak to me? Is the Lord saying something, showing me something that I am just not hearing or seeing?

 

Every time I read this I am caught up again in the curiosity factor. God didn’t pronounce his presence, he didn’t come to Moses in a dream, he did not write it out on the wall (although he is certainly not unwilling to do that!) God uses Moses’ own curiosity to fuel their meeting. He just burned a bush…that didn’t burn. And he waited.

 

Eventually Moses took notice and came looking. “I must go see.” And so God was there, waiting and ready to encounter Moses and forever change the trajectory of his life. There is a song by Andy Gullahorn called Burning Bushes. I always think of it when I come across Moses and his own burning bush.

 

I’m praying for a miracle to let me know you’re listening. Waiting for a lightning bolt to strike. Walking through a garden of a thousand burning bushes looking up to heaven for a sign.

 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to miss out on the burning bushes God has for me. Today I’m wondering, what ways is God trying to get my attention? What burning bushes are there? Where is God just waiting—waiting for me to come and listen and receive what he has to say and where he has to send?

 

It doesn’t have to be some unearthly expression to be God’s burning bush for us. Maybe it’s just a thought that won’t go away. A burden that won’t be shaken. An idea that seems to be on everyone else’s lips and spoken just for us. Could it be God? Could it be his burning bush just waiting until we get curious enough to check it out?

 

Why not take a couple steps in that direction? If it’s not God then you didn’t lose much; just a couple steps. If it is God, well, you will know—and soon! Aren’t you curious? Sometimes I think it’s tempting to expect God to show up in a set series of ways and look only to those types of his expression at the expense of anything outside it. But God may just surprise you. After all, it’s not everyday we read in the Bible about burning bushes. In fact, it was just that once…

 

the wild boring desert

I was ready to move on, ready to go into chapter 3 of Exodus and the amazing interaction between God and Moses. I was looking ahead at the burning bush and all my questions surrounding it. I almost missed this at the end of chapter two. And I was tempted to just move on anyway. Like I said, I wanted to get to the burning bush. But what’s happening here seems so important on many of levels. We should stop and consider it.

 

Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become an alien in a foreign land.”  Exodus 2:21-22

 

Here we see Moses getting married to one of the sheep herder’s daughters whom he rescued upon arriving in Midian. He then has a son. So Moses is no longer running but now settling down in his exile. He is no longer fleeing but just living, albeit in a place not his own. And in naming his son he exposes the raw feelings that come with this fact. He names his son Gershom which sounds like or refers to his statement, “I have become an alien in a foreign land.”

 

Moses is out of place and he knows it. He feels it. The full weight, the full price of his secret actions and subsequent hiding of those actions is starting to be felt. He is away from home, away from his family, away from his culture, away from everything he knew. He is alone. Or so he thinks.

 

I’ve been there. More times than I wish were true. Feeling out of place. Looking around and just wondering, “How did I get here?!” Wishing I could go back in time and undo the decisions that got me where I am. Sometimes regret is the deepest sorrow.

 

Moses is about to spend forty years of his life in this alien state. Forty years lost in the desert. Sounds like a familiar theme for him doesn’t it? Forty years lost in the wilderness so that he can then lead the Israelites through their forty years in the wilderness. And that’s just it. Moses feels like an alien in a foreign land and in some sense he needs to feel that. That’s what those he’s coming to rescue are living in, that’s what they are feeling.

 

Sometimes I’ve wondered why the book of Exodus tells us nothing more of these forty years in the desert wilderness of Midian. It just breezes over it. We get this glimpse and then the next chapter is him being called out. Why don’t we get any other details?

 

Probably because there weren’t any. There is nothing to tell. It was forty years, sitting, waiting, living. Forty years in the wilderness feeling what those he would come to rescue were feeling, forty years that were the result of his decision to act in secret, hide his actions, and then run away. Forty years to regret his actions and repent and become. Forty years of shaping. It isn’t that nothing actually happened, but that nothing happened to tell us about. It was an internal journey for Moses. What’s important for us to see is who he was going in: the alien in a foreign land, and who is coming out: the reluctant rescuer.

 

Moses spends forty years waiting and preparing to do what God had called him to do from birth. Forty years after growing up into a man. For God the journey is far more valuable than the destination. Getting Moses ready is worth as much time as what he is being made ready for.

 

And this is what I’m struck with today. This is what I’m hesitant to receive. I don’t want this truth, but it wants me. God wants me to have it. I would rather let it fall, let it drop to the ground and go searching for something different. But this is to be mine today.

 

I tend to want to look to the next thing, to get ready, to move forward. I tend to focus on where God would be calling me and what he would be calling me to. Sometimes God has us in the wilderness and we assume that we can and maybe should pray ourselves out of it. But sometimes that’s right where God wants us.

 

There are times when God wants us in the wild and boring desert. And yes, he knows it’s taking a long time. But to him it’s worth it. To him it’s all part of the path he has us on.

 

God’s plan for today

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.               Ephesians 2:10

 

Ever considered the fact that when you woke up this morning there were already good works prepared for you to do?

You don’t have have to do them, but they are there, ready for you to do them should you choose.

It’s pretty amazing to consider that when God created us, before we breathed a breath, God prepared the opportunities of today; the good works he would offer us.

I think it’s tempting to think of this in large and grand terms. To look for opportunities of immense consequence to identify as these good works. But in reality, our days are often made up of small and seemingly inconsequential moments. But these are the moments where we can find the works God prepared in advance for us to do. Opportunities to love and to serve.

God made plans for us today, and tomorrow, and the next day. And he made all these plans in advance.

I wonder what opportunities God has for me today?

the gift of today

Why are we so insistent on living for tomorrow? What’s the rush to get through today?

My constant propensity to get to tomorrow has often left me with a lack of contentment for today. Living for the future (much like living in the past) appears much more enticing than living in today.

The future holds so much potential! So much “what could be” and so much “better than right now.” And it can easily cause us to forget about the today. Maybe we want the tomorrow because of the pain of today. Or maybe it’s just because we aren’t really living today and so it’s mundane and monotonous.

In Matthew 6 Jesus calls us to a life that puts less focus on tomorrow and more on the right now:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.         

Matthew 6:25-34

He’s talking about worry and he’s talking about the worry of whether or not we will have our basic needs met. But living in this land of wealth and ease I wonder if I have simply changed the things I worry about.

As an American I have had difficult financial times in my life. I’ve struggled to pay bills, I’ve been behind, and I’ve not always known where the money was going to come from to pay for this or that.

But I’ve never gone hungry. I’ve never been faced with the tragedy of nothing to clothe myself with. I’ve never been truly faced with these difficult and life-threatening problems Jesus is identifying.

But I have worried about tomorrow. I have obsessed over whether or not this plan or that plan will come to fruition. I have plotted and planned and worked so hard for tomorrow that I failed to note anything of significance about today.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t plan and be responsible and make ready so we are prepared for tomorrow. I’m just saying that Jesus is calling us to not get overly obsessed with tomorrow. He is encouraging us to not miss today because we long so much for tomorrow.

Today, I choose to live in the present. To embrace today and all that it holds; difficult and easy, painful and joyful. Whether it comes with laughter or tears. I want to be fully in this moment, living today.

Ultimately it’s an invitation to trust God with tomorrow and receive from him today.