Exodus Part One: Scars

‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners’

Isaiah 61:1

We all know that feeling, the dawning realisation that so many of our choices thoughts and actions are coloured by our past, tinted by a life lived in the muddy reality of human relationship, human brokenness. Human inhumanity.

Scars. We all have them, and not just on the outside, numb lumps of tissued skin, but within us, numb lumps of scarring memory pushed into the recesses of our hearts. Where nobody sees. Where nobody knows. Where we can pretend they don’t exist. There they remain, silent, but still alive, still at work in every thought, word and action of our being.

We lived through the moments that caused them, and now, unthinking, we live through them still. We see everything through them, re-live everything through them, these tinted window-pane scars colouring every moment, every relationship ever after. We see ourselves through them. Who am I? I am who my scars say I am. Is there another way to be?

They had them too, these people. Numb lumps of tissued skin and number lumps of scarring memories. For generations power had bent them down, ground them down, down to dust.

They were slaves. They were the children of slaves. Freedom was a foreign thing.

But they were not just dust. A wisp-thin thread of breath still lingered in their lungs and in the echoing corridors of their minds there remained a faint remembrance of a time when they’d been loved, a moment they’d been chosen. A memory like a tune half remembered but almost forgotten, like a distant melody floating on the breeze, a song once sung over them in a garden long ago.

So they called with all their breath, with all their tears, with all their beaten broken hearts. They called to God. The God who had made their fathers a promise. They held onto this promise like a lifeline thread. They clung onto it as though their very breath depended on it. Because it did.

And God heard them. Remembered them. Leaned low and listened.

‘‘During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.’ Exodus 2:23-25

A double deluge swept by our house a while ago, two huge tropical storms merging into one, raging all through the night. In the morning our drenched yard was full of brokenness; broken trees, broken plants, broken branches. A large palm branch had crashed fifteen feet down to the bushes below. When we pulled it from it’s tangled resting place the following morning, to our surprise we discovered a small nest tightly woven between the fronds, clinging tenaciously, un-dislodged by it’s fall. It’s woven walls remained in tact, strong, protective. All at once fragile and all at once impregnable.

It reminded me of him. This one baby human, placed into a nest in the middle of another storm; the storm of an Egyptian Pharaoh’s policy of infanticide.

‘Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”’ Exodus 1:22

A nest is a home, but what if your home is built in the shadow of a power bent on destroying those within it? What can the weak do in the face of all this strength?

‘Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.’Exodus 2:1-2

She tried to keep him close, keep him quiet, keep him alive, but she knew that everyday she held onto him was another day risking his death. So she placed him in this nest, nesting his life within God’s hands.

‘But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Exodus 2:3-4

In order to save him she had to be willing to lose him. Power said his death was inevitable, but her mother’s heart had other plans. God’s heart had other plans. She wove for him this ark-nest strong enough to out-last a raging storm, out-wit tossing waves, out-run restless crocodiles. An ark-nest similar in material and description to the Ark that Noah built, holding life, holding hope; Holding God’s purposes for a brand new beginning.

And what kind of plan is that? The plan of a desperate woman? A crazy woman? Or the plan of a woman of faith?

In placing Moses in an ark-nest on the Nile Moses’ mother was obeying Pharaohs order while side-stepping his intention. If challenged she could have answered truthfully that she had put her child in the Nile, while all the while knowing in her heart that she did so God’s way, in intelligent civil disobedience, honouring God and her own God-given mother’s heart over the orders of domineering Power.

And did her mother’s heart know? Know just the place to leave him, the place where hope would find him? Could her mothers heart have known, trusted, felt, that the same rhythmic song beating in her own loving heart would also be beating in the breast of Pharaohs daughter?

‘Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

“Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him.’ Exodus 2:5-9

Three hearts loving, three hearts protecting, three hearts defying the orders of Power, re-ordering their lives to make space for life.

In letting go of her child and trusting him to God, Moses’ mother received him back, along with a wage for the care of him and a guarantee of protection for him. She reached recklessly for the impossible and received back a miracle. A miracle more extravagant and subversive than her heart could have imagined. This one simple act of love delivering her child, also delivers the first unseen crack in the foundation of Pharaoh’s power over Israel.

In the wake of her faith-filled desperate actions, a super-power is thwarted, out-witted, out-manoeuvred by the hearts of these three women; a mother, a princess and a sister… and the God of all the Universe.

God’s great plan of redemption has begun. His great battle cry is the high pitched cry of a vulnerable infant, His bold stroke of strategic warfare, the flailing arms of a defenceless babe, placed right there within the walls of Power. Innocent. Vulnerable.

And Pharaoh never saw it coming.

‘When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”’ Exodus 2:10

A name naming two realities; Moses name means ‘son’ in Egyptian, but it also resembles an unusual Hebrew verb meaning to ‘draw out’*; He was an adopted son of Egypt, was drawn out of water himself and he would one-day draw Israel out of slavery through water.

Moses now grows up in the gap between these two cultures, the adopted son of ruling royalty and the biological son of slaves. Hebrew, Egyptian, privileged. Confused. Belonging everywhere. Belonging nowhere.

Nowhere but the very centre of God’s great plan of redemption for Israel.

And Moses began living in this calling before he even knew he had it, led by his heart, towards justice…

‘One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”

The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known. When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.”’ Exodus 2:11-15

Before he was called by God, Moses already found himself called by his own heart, drawn toward caring for the oppressed and the vulnerable.

‘Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.’ Exodus 2:16-17

The word used for ‘rescue’** in verse 17 above is the same word God will use when He calls Moses to partner with Him to come to Israel’s rescue.

Moses already had a heart that lent towards justice, a stirring within him that cared for the down trodden, and it wasn’t just talk. On all three occasions, (the oppression of the Egyptian slave master, the Hebrews fighting and the daughters of Jethro at the well) Moses makes the concerns of the oppressed his own. And intervenes.

God sees Moses long before Moses saw himself and He was going to take that one small heart of Moses that leant toward justice and stretch it over a much larger injustice.

God sees us. He sees who we truly are long before we do. He sees the authentic shape of our beating heart and strengthens us to be… ourselves.

Moses, a fugitive from Egypt, marries into yet a third culture, alien and estranged, he then names his first born son for how he feels…

‘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 a foreigner in a foreign land.” Exodus 2:21-22

Who am I? I am slave, a son of slaves. I am a failed prince, a fugitive. I am a stranger, an alien. A foreigner in a foreign land. Who am I? I am who my scars say I am. Is there another way to be?

Moses didn’t know, didn’t understand who he was. His identity was caught now between three worlds: the worlds of a Hebrew slave, an Egyptian Prince, and a desert dwelling Midianite. Who was he? Where did he belong? Nowhere.

Nowhere, but the centre of God’s plans for Israel’s redemption. He just didn’t know this yet. So God came down to make this clear…

‘Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”’ Exodus 3:1-5

YHWH draws near in fire and holy light and whispers the belonging Moses soul has never fully found…

‘Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.’ Exodus 3:6

‘I am the God of your father’ Moses, the family you belong to, the people you belong with, and these people, your people, belong with Me.

Just as He first introduced Himself to Isaac (Genesis 26:24) and Jacob (Genesis 28:13), God now introduces Himself to Moses by His relationship with his forebears. In doing this God embeds Himself into the history of this family, the story of this people and declares His commitment to them.

God introduces Himself to Moses (a floundering fugitive just as Jacob had been), not because Moses is flawless and faithful, but because God is: faithful to this family, faithful to His promise to Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 26:2-4), faithful to His own commitment to bless all people through this people.

The God who made all the spinning stars weaves Himself into this one storyline thread, a thread that began before time and will end after it, a thread that entwines itself into every life in this humble family line from Abraham to David and beyond. He ‘in-narrates’* into this family’s story, so that one day He will also incarnate into their family line; God in leather sandals.

‘The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Exodus 3:7-10

‘I have seen’, ‘I have heard’, ‘I am concerned’, ‘I have come’; Because God always sees, always hears and is always concerned for the cries of the oppressed, and searches out his shepherds, calling them from their sleepy wilderness into His strategic action.

Whether is is Martin Luther King, Samuel Sharpe or William Wilberforce God seeks out people with hearts which beat in time with His, beating for justice, beating for compassion, beating with the courage to answer His call.

But the call to courage can be a rhythm that causes hearts to miss a beat. A life forged in the muddy reality of human relationship, human brokenness, human inhumanity is a life full of scars reshaping our souls.

‘But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”’ Exodus 3:11

Who am I? I am a voiceless nothing. I am a fugitive, an alien, a failure. Who am I even to be speaking with this God of Israel. ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?’

Who am I? I am who my scars say I am. Is there another way to be?

Who am I? The question that has settled in the depths of Moses being since the moment he was drawn out of the water as a child. He has lived this question, viewing everything through it, this tinted window pane scar colouring every moment every relationship ever after. Colouring this moment also, right now, this moment when the God of all the Universe is calling him by name into who he truly is. He can’t see, can’t comprehend this call, all he can see is his own inadequacy, because he cannot see himself as God sees him.

And YHWH’s answer is not to explain to Moses who he is, but to explain to Moses who He is, and that He will be with him. Because we never truly know ourselves until we know ourselves through God’s eyes, until we know God and know ourselves though His presence with us. And this takes the time it takes.

‘And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”’ Exodus 3:12

And the sign God gives Moses is His word that they will meet back at same place, having accomplished everything God has said, arriving back where they started, knowing the place for the first time***.

Because this is really how we know His name, know Him. Through taking a journey with Him, through the unfolding of our story with Him on this road. There is no other way to really learn His name. It’s a walk. A long one. With Him. It’s a story we live in and find ourselves alive in. With Him. This story He has been writing, this road he has been walking since before all time began.

Moses won’t know who he is, until he knows himself through God’s eyes and he won’t know who God is until he takes a journey with Him, to the centre of God’s heart. And the same will be true for the whole nation of Israel, and every other nation, every other human being with breath in lungs on this pale blue spinning ball. Knowing God is a journey we take. Sometimes reluctantly.

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”’ Exodus 3:13

A name is the beginning of a person, the Iceberg-tip of knowing who a person is. In ancient Hebrew culture (and many other non-western cultures) a name is chosen carefully with the intention of capturing the story, destiny and essential nature of a person. It is imbedded intimately into the story of both the child and the family they are born into, the story of a people, past, present and future. ‘Isaac’ meant ‘laughter’, because he brought it, ‘Esau’ meant ‘hairy’ because he was, ‘Jacob’ meant ‘deceiver’, because he did, Moses meant ‘to draw out’ because he was drawn out of water, and Moses’ son’s name, ‘Gershom’, meant ‘foreigner there’ (Exodus 2:22). Because that is how his father Moses felt all the days of his life.

So what name can the God of all this spinning universe be captured by? What name does He have? What name does He present Himself to humans with that humans can comprehend?

How do you label the God who laid the foundations of the cosmos and holds the spinning galaxies in His hand?

‘Who has gone up to heaven and come down?

Whose hands have gathered up the wind?

Who has wrapped up the waters in a cloak?

Who has established all the ends of the earth?

What is his name, and what is the name of his son?

Surely you know!’

Proverbs 30:4

Surely we know? How do we embed the person of God into a story-name humankind can comprehend? How can any ‘tip of the iceberg’ name sit right on a God whose story is eternal, whose vastness is incommunicable, whose glory is unfathomable?

‘God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I Am has sent me to you.’” Exodus 3:14

I AM. I am who I am. I will be who I will be. The One who is. YHWH. The name naming the reality of God… endless, absolute, omnicient, omnipotent, omnipresent;

Present with us.

I Am. No explanation, no limitation, no job description, no title. God could have given Moses His business card in the form of an intergalactic light show, a description of how He made the earth or a spiritual experience envisioning God’s throne room. But God keeps it simple. Mysterious. Confusing.

Don’t even try and get your head around this Moses. Because no label humans give me will ever hold me anyway. I Am. YHWH. You will know me as you walk with me.

I Am. With you.

God will reveal Himself to Moses as they travel along this road together and Moses will come to speak with God ‘as one speaks with a friend’ (Exodus 33:11). But right now on this mountain, at the beginning of their journey together, standing before this bush all fire and light, Moses is squinting and shielding his eyes, unable to hold this moment in his small bewildered mind. God knows this is all much bigger than Moses can comprehend, so He gives Moses another name, a window into who He is; Faithful.

The story of His already long walk with Moses’ family line.

I Am; The God of your fathers.

‘God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever,

the name you shall call me

from generation to generation.’

‘Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, “The Lord, the God of your fathers – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt.’

Exodus 3:15-16

And this is the second and third time (three times in 10 verses) God introduces Himself in the context of His relationship with Moses’ fathers and forebears, embedding Himself into their story, the story of His long walk with them. With us.

Just as God embedded Himself into the storyline of frail human beings, so, our stories are also woven through with Him. His large and long story of blessing and covenant faithfulness to frail, faulty, floundering human beings. All of us.

Because in the end we only truly know God through our lived story with Him. No other way. We can read theology textbooks and holy scriptures from dawning sun to dusking light, every moment, every day of our lives, but until we step out from the shore into the swirling depths of a living relationship with God we will never truly know Him… or the story we could have lived on the trekking journey with Him. We might have known aboutHim. But knowing Him is another matter. Knowing Him requires risk, relationship, and a reaching for Him. Because God is a God who makes it personal. I Am. With you.

As Moses walks with YHWH he will learn who He is; faithful. But right now on this mountain standing in front of a bush on fire, Moses feels out of his depth, all at sea, like a baby set afloat on a raging river, swamped by circumstances beyond his control, borne along by a current leading back to all the places he thought he’d escaped and feels inadequate to face.

‘Moses answered, ‘What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, “The Lord did not appear to you”?’ Exodus 4:1

What if..? What if they do not believe? What if I do not believe? What if my anxieties and insecurities are stronger than the word of the living God? What if I am living in the shadow of a confusing painful past and seeing reality through the scars it inflicted?

Who am I? I am who my scars say I am. Is there another way to be?

Moses question isn’t really a question, but a stalling excuse.

God answers Moses ‘question’ with another ‘question’- that’s not really a question.

‘Then the Lord said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’

‘A staff,’ he replied.’ Exodus 4:2

What is that? As if He doesn’t know what it is. A staff. The tool of a shepherd for doing the job of a shepherd, shepherding sheep. Shepherding God’s children out of slavery to safety. But Moses doesn’t see this yet. His shepherding in the wilderness up until now had been a wandering and a hiding. His staff a crutch to lean on.

So God takes this crutch and forms it into a weapon, a weapon to wage a war on darkness.

‘The Lord said, ‘Throw it on the ground.’

Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the Lord said to him, ‘Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.’ So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. ‘This,’ said the Lord, ‘is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob – has appeared to you.’ Exodus 4:3-5

‘So that they may believe’….so that you may believe Moses. The only ‘crutch’, the only staff any of us need lean on is God’s presence with us, His power, His faithfulness. All our crutches that are not Him will eventually become snakes, tempting us away from reliance on YHWH, the only being who can truly be relied on.

‘Then the Lord said, ‘Put your hand inside your cloak.’ So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, the skin was leprous – it had become as white as snow.

‘Now put it back into your cloak,’ he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.

Then the Lord said, ‘If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.’ Exodus 4:6-9

God gives Moses three signs to convince Israel (and to convince Moses) to believe. But still Moses identity as a ‘nobody belonging nowhere’ retains it’s death-grip on his heart. All the burning bushes and miraculous signs in the world will not convince a heart convinced of it’s own inadequacy. Healing is the only miracle that can free Moses mind. He is a slave to the scars of his past. A child of slaves. Freedom is a foreign thing. Confidence is a foreign thing.

Who am I? I am who my scars say I am. Is there another way to be?

‘Moses said to the Lord, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.’ Exodus 4:10

God has appeared to Moses in a bush alight with fire and holy light, personally introduced Himself as YHWH, ‘I AM’- the almighty, limitless and omnipotent God. He has declared His commitment to the welfare of Moses and his people. He has turned crutches into snakes, skin into sickness, sickness into healing and then promised greater miracles yet;

And all Moses can see is his own inadequacy.

He can’t hear God’s call because his identity scars call louder, scream longer than God’s voice. The God of all the universe stands before him in fire and light but Moses’ insecure identity is a stronger reality for him than God’s presence right there with him.

Seeing isn’t believing when our eyes are coloured and conditioned by our past. Seeing isn’t believing when what we believe about ourselves stops us truly seeing; Truly seeing ourselves. Truly seeing God. Present. Right there, with us.

The uncomfortable truth is that we, like Moses, all live and breathe and pass our days on a planet inhabited by humans. Humans who love conditionally, and love occasionally. Our human identities are forged in our ‘formative years’, formed by broken breaking moments of loneliness, negligence, impatience, inconsistency and a thousand other words that name our pain. Life breaks us in small ways and big, and we limp and we stumble. And we pretend. And we push the pain into the darkness farthest corners. And then we don’t live in the world as it is, spinning on it’s axis formed by the loving hand of God, we live in the world as we are; Broken. Blind. Anxious. Living through the story our identity was forged in, seeing ourselves and everything else through the lens this identity projects onto the world. Teetering on the axis of fear, unresolved pain, self-protective pride, insecurity, despair, blindness, arrogance and grief. And a terrible underlying feeling that we’ll never be enough. Who am I? I am who my scars say I am. Is there another way to be?

And God, well He can be standing right there before us, beside us, all around us, revealing His commitment to us and our vocation, and all we can see is our ‘not enough’ all we can feel is our inadequacy and all we can hear is the thudding of fear in our chest.

When we feel to see, we fail to see, fail to see the world as it is, ourselves as we truly are and God, right there. With us. A faithful God, slow to give up on us, after we have long given up on ourselves.

A God who says ‘Who are you? You are mine. You are who I know you to be, though you don’t believe this yet. You are not who your scars say you are. There is another way to be; Whole.’

God replies now to Moses with more questions that are not really questions… because He knows Moses won’t yet be able to answer them anyway. Not really. Not with more than words.

‘The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’ Exodus 4:11-12

I will be your crutch. Lean on me. I will be your staff to lean on, your voice to speak with, your words to say. Stop living out the script lines of your complicated childhood, lines rehearsed through a lifetime of belonging nowhere. You belong. With Me.

But Moses script lines are more convincing to him than the word of God.

‘But Moses said, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.’ Exodus 4:13

Moses didn’t yet understand God’s heart or God’s ways. Not yet. He thought he needed eloquence and confidence for this job. He didn’t understand that he already possessed all he needed, a humble shepherd’s heart that leant toward justice… and the presence of God with him. God doesn’t see things as humans do. We see outward appearance, performance, presentation. God looks at our heart, searching for the faintest remaining flicker of His Imago Dei there, fanning it to life. Moses humble heart that bent toward justice and acted for the oppressed was perfect for his calling. He just didn’t know it yet.

Knowing God is a journey, a long walk of getting to know who He is and getting to know who we are in Him, and who we aren’t- in recognising the false story our script-lined life has given us. Moses will mention his ‘faltering lips’ on two more occasions (Chapter 6, verses 12 and 30) but after this his excuses strangely disappear and he becomes a strong, humble and respected leader, a leader who leans towards justice and mercy. The leader he was all along.

But right here at the beginning of the journey though God is angered at Moses for not believing His word, He meets him where he’s at, while having no intention of leaving him there.

‘Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, ‘What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him.’ Exodus 4:14-16

No one else can live our vocation for us, it is a life shaped solely and uniquely for us, in partnership with the God of all the universe. But we, all of us can succumb to the fear-filled laziness of living half alive. Living in our scars; I can’t do that, I’m too weak, too inadequate, not enough. Or, living for other gods; money, security, status, rather than our true calling.

God has an adventure planned for each one of us but not every one of us will join Him there. This frustrates God and diminishes us, but He lets us make our choices and works with us where we are at, reminding us that He is with us.

..But take this staff in your hand so that you can perform the signs with it.’ Exodus 4: 14-17

‘So you can perform the signs…’ so you will remember to lean on me and believe who I say you are over who your scars dictate you to be.

So Moses goes, with his staff.

With his God.

‘So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt.

And he took the staff of God in his hand.’ Exodus 4:20

And over a millennia later God himself in leather sandals will go, will ride on a donkey into another city full of people enslaved, a people bound not with physical chains, but spiritual ones. And a week later these people will choose their chains over Him, and condemn Him to die for trying to save them. And God will use this, the darkest moment of their slavery, to break every chain around every human heart forever.

Just as He said He would through the prophet Isaiah.

‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners’

Isaiah 61:1

‘Who are you? You are mine. You are who I know you to be, though you don’t believe this yet. You are not who your scars say you are. There is another way to be; Whole.’

References:

*Goldingay, John ‘Exodus and Leviticus For Everyone’, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010

**’in-narrates’. A term I (Liz Campbell) invented to describe Jesus coming not just into human flesh (incarnation) but also coming into our human story (in-narration): specifically the story of Israel.

***T.S. Elliot, ‘Four Quartets’

Hello! Thanks for visiting. I’m thrilled you stopped by for a read. If you found this story interesting and want to explore more of this kind of thing, you may be interested in ‘Live the long walk’ ( livethelongwalk.com ) where my ‘Long Walk…’ story (about the journey Jesus took to find us) is unfolding. This post is just one excerpt from there.

Cheers, Liz.