Their Great Redemption Story
Read Exodus Chapters 1-4

As I am reading through the book of Exodus in the Bible, I am reminded that for the Jewish people, this was their great 'salvation story.'  Trapped in Egypt, oppressed by slavery, they cried out to God and "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 2:24,25). 

God then presents Himself to Moses with His mission: "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..." (3:8).  From the start, this is God's mission.  He asks Moses to be his spokesperson - this fearful, stuttering shepherd a rather unlikely candidate.  But then, perhaps this is precisely the point.  God wants to make it clear that this rescue mission will not succeed because of the charisma of a powerful leader, or the strength of an army.  It will succeed because God is about to do something in the world beyond all human proportions.  In doing so, He will draw near to them in profound ways to meet them in their misery and to bring them to freedom. 


Let's keep reading...

What's in a Name?

Beauty for Ashes.  In the sixty-first chapter of the book of Isaiah in the Bible, there is a prophecy given to God's people foreshadowing the ministry of Jesus hundreds of years later.  In this passage, which Jesus himself later quotes, we find these words:

He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoner, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair...

It is this remarkable message of exchange - our dark and lost state for the freedom He freely gives, our despair exchanged for his joy, our 'ashes' for his 'beauty,' - that I find at the heart of the Christian message.  Everything I have and enjoy is of God's grace.  I bring nothing and can give nothing, but what He has first given me. 

As I journey through the Scriptures and look at the lives of some men and women of faith who have gone before us, it is my prayer that these simple reflections would do one thing - testify to the amazing grace of God, who is now my all in all.