This may be your year

January 16, 2012

    This may be “your year.” Many religions have written – or, unwritten – bucket lists for pilgrims. For Muslims, it’s a trip to Mecca. Catholics long to stand in St. Peter’s Square, in Rome. Calvinist Protestants book a trip to Geneva; Jews head for the Wailing Wall. There’s something about blending adventure and faith that stretches the devout…
    One trip that many Christians place on their future horizon is a journey through the whole Bible, getting on the boat at Genesis 1:1 and disembarking at Revelation 22:21. If this is your year, this is a big week for you! Get Netflix to send you a copy of Cecil B. DeMille’s signature movie – The Ten Commandments – and watch his reenactment of the story you’ll be revisiting, from the opening chapters of Exodus. Why do we need to know all of this ancient history, anyway?
    “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope,” (Romans 15:4). It’s there for a constructive benefit: when we consider how God has worked in the past, we get a better sense of what’s going on as He works in and around us, today… and that gives us the hope we need to get through our own wilderness moments!
    As Moses approached his 80th birthday, his memories were too painful to mention. Saved by his birth mother’s resourcefulness from an ethnic-cleansing order of Pharaoh, he had spent his first 40 years as a Prince of Egypt, though a son of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As an up-and-coming man with a position of privilege, he had intervened to save a Jewish slave being brutalized by his Egyptian handler, and killed the abuser in the process. He tried to hide the body, but his action was discovered, reported… and he became a fugitive from Pharaoh’s forces.
    Arriving in the wilderness, in the region occupied by Midianite Bedouins, he endeared himself to a sonless sheep magnate and gained a wife, two sons, and a job tending his father-in-law’s herds. For 40 years, the man with a bright future had lived the life of an expatriot, with no hope for a future that was any different than his current, less-than-he-had-hoped experience.
    Until he met the bush – or, should I say, – The Bush. Far from the home tents, tending sheep in uninhabitable desolation, he saw a natural phenomenon and got closer, to get a look: burning, but not consumed. A voice – the Angel of the Lord, Jesus before Bethlehem – has come for a meeting, with him. It wasn’t on Moses’ calendar, but it was certainly on God’s…
    The notes from the meeting are in Exodus 3 and 4. The executive summary: the people of the Promise – the family of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob – had multiplied in number (from 70 to 2 million) over their 400+ year sojourn in Egypt, and their grief had grown at the same rate. Originally honored guests; now, enslaved workmen, feared by the Pharaoh. Moses saw one Jewish man abused and intervened; God saw the whole of Israel’s family in that condition, and was ready to intervene.
    Why share that with Moses, the man who was furthest from the epicenter of the crisis? Just one reason: God was sending him to be God’s instrument of salvation from oppression, to lead them out. The Promised People, returning to the Promised Land. How would God’s plan be actualized? By one man fulfilling his Calling…
    The start of this familiar story is forgettable: just another Bedouin shepherd, encountering just another desert deity. Mid-story, they’ve progressed to I AM – God’s name for Himself – to “I’m not!” – which was Moses’ self-description, when confronted with God’s assignment for his future.
    The story blasted into hyperdrive when Moses progressed from, “I’m not!” to, “I am, because you’ve given me everything I need to execute the orders that have come from I AM!” All of the miracles that followed – for 40 years – came from Moses’ consent to live out his calling…
    By the way: the Bush still burns… and continues to call. Have you reached the “I AM, and, because of Him, I am!” moment, in your story?