Writing #8: Exodus

I finished the book of Exodus today. What an amazingly diverse book. What a profoundly sincere look at the ordered lives of those Israelites who were led out of Egypt into 'freedom' as God's Covenant people. They moaned at times, "Why have you led us out here into the desert? In Egypt we sat around pots of meat!" After reading the book of Exodus, in a lot of ways I have to agree. The life of faith, which is necessarily the point of Exodus, is, at best complicated, and at worst, difficult. Anyone who tried to read or live the book of Exodus would have a difficult time doing so apart from faith. And when I say faith, I mean much more than 'yes, I agree this is true.' I also mean, 'yes, this makes sense to someone even if I agree with it and it makes no sense to me.' Put blood on the ear lobe, the thumb, and the big toe in order to consecrate Aaron as a priest. Yes, in the world of faith this makes perfectly logical sense.

But I read somewhere that faith is believing all things make sense to God even when they don't make sense to us. Someone asked me Tuesday evening what the blood on the earlobe, thumb and big toe meant. I responded that I had little idea, or, maybe, it was a way of saying you are consecrated head to toe. Or, maybe it was a way of saying, "May your ears, your hands and feet be found doing the work of God always." Or, maybe it was a way of saying: "Even the smallest parts of your body have been redeemed by the shedding of blood; don't take anything for granted when it comes to your redemption." Faith issues are not nearly as complicated as, I believe, some want to make them out to be. True, faith does sometimes involve that so-called 'leap', but more often than not the we take the leap knowing full well that the leap makes sense to God even if it does not make sense to us. That is to say, we don't put our trust in the leap itself, but in the God who may or may not have told us to take the 'leap' in the first place. We know the end result of the leap and we trust God with the landing or the not landing.

At the beginning of Exodus, Moses' mother took that leap of faith when she 'saw that he was a fine child.' She took another leap when she hid him in the river. She took another leap having Miriam go and watch for him. And her faith kept going and going. It took faith for Moses' to go back and declare before Pharaoh: Let my people go! And it took faith for Moses to approach the burning bush, and throw his staff onto the ground, and raise his staff over the Red Sea and hope the water split in two. I think it took a tremendous amount of faith, perhaps more than was required when he went before Pharaoh, for Moses to go before his own people and say to them, "Follow me." This man of faltering tongue and shallow self-confidence had the faith to go before the most powerful man on earth at the time and demand that God be recognized. Faith is the victory that overcame the world. I suspect it still is.

I think it also took sincere faith to follow a cloud around through the desert. I'm one for knowing where I am going and it seems to me that following a cloud around in a windy desert could be hazardous to our plans. Therein, however, I think is the key to faith. Their journey's were not a matter of going where they wanted to go but God's. So is ours. It is, and I say this humbly and passionately, entirely too easy to go where we want to go and do the things we want to do. Only faith gives us the courage and stamina to stay on course when God invites us to go His way. I'm not saying the journey is not filled with trouble along the way. On the contrary, wind blows clouds all over the place, everyday. Our job is to seek the cloud and follow it. "In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out--until the day it lifted." What he means is, we have to pay close attention to what the Lord is doing and follow Him. To do otherwise will inevitably result in peril and disaster.