Waiting to Wear my Sandals!

My sandals are on!

When we watch movies with my sister, I watch both her and the movie. She gets really engrossed in the story, and she can't hear what you say to her. Her back stiffens in the scary parts and it really is quite as interesting as the movie. Her daughter has inherited this deep enjoyment too. When she loves a movie, she'll watch it over and over amid the indulgent boredom of her parents. Even before she could speak, you could tell that she knew exactly what was coming next in her favourite movies. She'd shout at the shouting part, sing at the singing parts. Now imagine watching both of them watch a movie together. Pure entertainment! 

I've been reading one of the most dramatic stories in the Bible. Moses and the Ten Plagues. I've read and heard this story many times but this time as I read it, I was transported, much like my sister, into this story. It made me wonder, shake my head, pause my reading to reflect, continue reading, get awed, surprised, sad and happy. The hero is Moses and Pharaoh is obviously the villain. Aaron has a great supporting role. The movie, well story, starts with the spectacular burning bush. This reminds me of one of the first sermons I heard my pastor preach he said that when Isaiah was called, he said, 'Here I am Lord, send me'. When Moses was called, 'Here I am Lord, send my brother Aaron!'. True joke! He didn't want to go and thought he was inadequate being a stammerer and all and he kept asking for signs. When the Bible records that Moses said something, and he said many many things before huge crowds, remember that he stammered. Moses was so afraid and faithless that God wanted to kill him. (My back was stiff at this scary turn in the story.) Luckily Zippy, his wife acted quickly and turned God's anger away. So God dispatched Aaron to meet Moses and start the 'Let Our People Go' chorus. It is interesting to note that Aaron is not reported to have hesitated in any way unlike that his brother Moses. But God had decided he was going to use scared Moses not ready Aaron. 

So they go to Pharaoh and ask for the people to be set free to go worship. The first time they asked, Pharaoh decided that the Israelites were very idle and needed more work. He ordered that they no longer to be provided with straw to make bricks but to source their own straw and provide the same number of bricks! I suspect this neither delighted the Israelites nor encouraged Moses. 

As if that was not enough, God hardened Pharaoh's heart and he wouldn't let the people leave. I stopped reading and considered this. It is repeated nine times. Ten times was that heart hardened. I wonder if he felt a tightness in the chest. We'd think he died of a heart attack but we know that honour goes to the Red Sea. As I read this story I was, am really, going through some hard times. I paused and wondered. Could I be praying and God has stopped my answer like he hardened Pharaoh's heart? Why did he harden his heart? As I continued reading, the answer was clear. To show His power. By the time He was done with the Egyptians, they knew who was God and who was not. Pharaohs wise men had seen the limit of their power too. 

Another thing that was clear was that Moses was the best improved student in the school of faith. Hebrews 11:27-28 records this beautifully; By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.  By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.

The weight of several of prayer requests in God's 'Pending' tray was becoming difficult to bear. Problems seemed to be having a family get together somewhere near me. I also had the beginnings of a cold that added to the heaviness in my spirit. A friend noticed and would pray for me and encourage me in those days. It is perhaps because of her prayers for my encouragement that the Moses story was coming alive for me. As I read about the last plague, I snapped out of my despair and realised something wonderful. I was looking at Moses, so strong and full of faith and quite different from the Moses at the burning bush. I was also considering what God told him. He told him that this was to be the last plague. The Israelites were going to leave. So sure was their departure from Egypt that they were to sleep with their sandals on! So I got out of my self-pity and said that like Moses and Aaron, I'd keep going back to Pharaoh asking for release knowing that one day, when His power is undeniably evident and my faith strengthened, God shall tell me to sleep with my sandals on! Until then, Pharaoh had better get used to my stuttering and to my articulate brethren!

Footnote - The story ends with these verses - Exodus 13:21-22; And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. As if to confirm my thoughts after I read this, I received a text with these two verses. The very last verses I had read. For sure the Israelites set off into the desert with God leading them by day as a cloud, perhaps to cool them and at night as a pillar of fire, to warm them and light their way. He was to them what they needed for their journey. Exactly what they needed for their journey. He is to us what we need. 

Master Chef: Galilee

Another guest post! This time by Peter. Everyone say, "Thanks Peter!" 

Master Chef: Galilee

For us to say we understand is not enough, because often times we don’t, sometimes we just hold on, and wait.

Creativity is what underscores all the innovators in whichever genre. When we watch the popular cooking competition ‘Master Chef’ for example, the creativity that goes into coming up with the various foods and their names, serves to win over (or not) the judges in a markedly stiff competition for a prize.

However, despite all the creativity that goes celebrated for their abilities to fire the senses up through skill, imagination, color, texture and design, there is still a sense that Jesus’ offerings of his own “body and blood”, a follow up on his critically acclaimed ‘two fish and five loaves that fed multitudes’, notwithstanding creativity, even in this day and age, would have also enraged a public outcry to said television network and the series’ show-runners, as it did then in Galilee. We have seen scandals made from lesser ‘raves and rants’.

But in yet another one of those especially poignant passages that so frequently and powerfully marks the gospels and charges them with the character of Christ (John 6), we encounter Jesus and His twelve in a moment of deep sorrow followed by a great flash of glory. (And isn’t this the only way glory is experienced as demonstrated by Jesus Christ)

Jesus has just alienated many of His disciples by telling them that they must "eat (His) body" and "drink (His) blood." This startling directive must have been even more astonishing to its original audience than to us. They did not hear it through the filter of some two thousand years of systematic theology contrived to intellectualize and cushion us against the blow of His outrageous command, or the familiar relationship that comes from learning of his character. He hit them square in the face with it, and they felt the full force of it, and they were repulsed.

Here, Jesus, who was habitually pushing the margin of reason into the realms of faith, crossed the line. Here, He ventured too deeply into the uncharted territory of the kingdom of God, articulated too clearly the good, yet disturbing news of that kingdom, and called for an obedience too radically opposite to the reasonable sensibilities of many disciples at that time. He called them to follow too far outside their well-defined comfort lines...and they ran away in disgust or stood paralyzed in terror as Jesus walked on - walked on into the blinding light of the liberating truth He had just spoken.

The twelve stayed with Him - maybe reluctantly, maybe for reasons that they didn't know. But when Jesus asked that heartbreaking question, "Will you also leave Me?" it is Peter - the impetuous apostle - who gives us the secret to the hidden heart of discipleship:

"Where else can we go? You have the words of life!"

Peter may very well have been as perplexed over the point of Jesus' teaching as those who abandoned Him, but he was not confused about the person Jesus. Peter might have misunderstood His methods and mission, but he was certain that Jesus was the Messiah. He may have been in the dark about where he was going, but he knew that in Jesus there was light. He may have been scared nearly to death by the demands of discipleship, but he knew that in Jesus there was life. Just before this confession of his dependency on and the sufficiency of Jesus, he had sunk in the storm of intimidating waves and been rescued by the hand of a Master who knew his weakness and the shallowness of his faith (Matthew 14:22- 31).

There is much that we are intimidated by in our walk: our own fallible selfish will and singularly carnal desires – the windows and doors whose locks that don’t seem to close from the inside; doctrines that run counter to our cultures and egos; the zeitgeist that tasks itself on dismissing the age-old faith and beliefs we were raised on, beliefs that in fact seem sometimes nearly irrelevant if not insurmountable; the weakness of our human natures and the seeming severity of God's.

We can get lost in the endless debates over the mechanics of Christianity, even our own place in it, and sink in the despondency of our powerlessness to grasp the mystery of grace, but in the midst of that, we must do what the writer to the Hebrews advised and what Peter did, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith." It is He who calls us and enables. He offered Himself!  His body is our bread; His blood our drink. He has the words of life. He asks the impossible; just to get it out of the way, because it was always going to get in the way… then offers Himself. “I am the Way, the truth and the life.”

Like babies that seemingly endure a diet not of their choosing or making, for their own well-being, we too must trust He who offer’s Himself. We must trust God’s Word is better than bread, for “man shall not live by bread alone.”

One question I hear asked again and again on these cooking competitions by the judges is whether the contestants “are on that plate?” inferring whether they present a personal labor of love, something revealing not just their prowess but their own, identity, culture, passion, etc.; Well, the Master Chef from Galilee did just that, didn’t He?