If you are not signed up for our Old Testament reading plan, I would encourage you to do so! Taking the entire year to read just the Old Testament has been really great. Every time I read the Bible, I “find” something different.
Earlier this year, we read through Exodus. In Exodus 19, the Israelites have completed their march out of Egypt and are in the wilderness of Sinai. Moses goes to spend time with God, and God tells him to tell the people “If you obey my voice, and keep my covenant, then you will be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people” (vs 5). Moses comes back down and tells them, and the people respond. Verse 8 says “And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do”. Done. In the next few verses, the Israelites have an encounter with God where the Lord descends on Mount Sinai in fire, and there is an earthquake and God answers Moses by voice. How incredible this must have been to have experienced God through these sights, sounds and smells! What an immersion in His presence! God calls Moses up, and over the course of the next few chapters, Moses receives the 10 Commandments and many other instructions for the people to follow. The Bible says that the smoke rested on the mountain for six days. So, for six days, the people could visibly see God’s presence near them. This would have been a life changing experience.
Their lives were changed until Moses is delayed returning back from the mountain. All of the promises and commandments that they had agreed to in the previous chapters are forgotten, and in Exodus 32, they make a golden calf and worship it as the “God that brought them out of Israel”.
What a bunch of idiots. How could you so easily forget such an interaction with God?
Pretty easily.
There is a song that I have played at work almost every day for the last 6 months. It gives me a bit of peace in the middle of my stress. It’s my weak little way of letting God into my work space. About a month ago, out of the blue, we sang this song at church. We have never sang it before. I was in shock when I heard it, and I started to just weep during worship. I was just so overwhelmed. I felt like God was giving me just a little nudge- like He was acknowledging me. I felt like He was saying “I see you. I hear what you do when you’re alone. You’re not alone.” I took that feeling and carried it with me… for approximately 5 days. By the next weekend, I was back in a funk, wondering if God even cared. wondering what I was doing with my life, and wondering if I was just roaming around in the wilderness.
I’ll admit it. I’m an idiot also. I need to strengthen my faith is to carry these experiences farther than a few days. I need the maturity to hold on to these little moments in the silence and fight the urge to build my own golden calf. Just throw me in with those Israelites. We are the same.
My prayer for you and me is that we will find these moments in our daily lives and that we will cling to them.
~Shiney
