Acts 7:30-40, The Living Bible
“Forty years later, in the desert near Mount Sinai, an Angel appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush. Moses saw it and wondered what it was, and as he ran to see, the voice of the Lord called out to him, ‘I am the God of your ancestors—of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses shook with terror and dared not look.
“And the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground. I have seen the anguish of my people in Egypt and have heard their cries. I have come down to deliver them. Come, I will send you to Egypt.’ And so God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected by demanding, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ Moses was sent to be their ruler and savior. And by means of many remarkable miracles he led them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, and back and forth through the wilderness for forty years.
“Moses himself told the people of Israel, ‘God will raise up a Prophet much like me from among your brothers.’ How true this proved to be, for in the wilderness, Moses was the go-between—the mediator between the people of Israel and the Angel who gave them the Law of God—the Living Word—on Mount Sinai.
“But our fathers rejected Moses and wanted to return to Egypt. They told Aaron, ‘Make idols for us, so that we will have gods to lead us back; for we don’t know what has become of this Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’
We do this.
We all do this.
We reject the one
predicted by Moses,
the one who supplanted
Moses as
Liberator,
Leader,
Law-giver,
Interceder.
‘Make idols for me,’
I say to myself.
Dream them up,
dredge them up,
create them out of
the stuff of daily life.
That’s the ticket,
something tangible
and right here,
right now.
Will we ever learn?
Will we ever recognize
the Holy Ground
right next to us —
beneath our feet,
inside our spirits,
next to our hearts?
Lord, save us from the idols we would create, idle things that parade as a substitute for that place in our hearts only You can fill. Amen.
Blessings, Diana!
Indeed, indeed. Give us grace to seek you and to see you first, O Lord.
When I finally, truly understood, GOD with us, I came to realize Jesus is with me, the Holy Spirit is with me, God is with me….the Trinity is with me. And I have tears because to get me to that point in my life, I had to internalize that I have the Trinity with me and in me, because God turned His face away at My Savior, Jesus, called out to Him, and Jesus died for me. And every time I think of that moment, when Jesus took all the sin of the world on Him, mine included, I am done in.
But on the flip side of that, is the knowledge that the race set before us, is the race that we run toward Jesus, and that as we run, Jesus is there to encourage us to keep going…the host of witnesses encourage us to keep going, and as Christians, there are no losers….we all win the race, because Jesus won the race for us, and we are racing to win our prize…..Jesus Christ, our Redeemer.
Yes, that is a powerful picture of God’s amazing love and of the depth of God’s desire to be united with us. And I am so grateful for that great cloud of witnesses! And the older I get, the more I feel personally connected to so very many of them!