Living in the Spirit
August 26, 2014

 Scripture Reading: Exodus 3:1-15 

Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land,…The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’ — Exodus 3:7-12

Jesus told us that God counts every hair on our head and knew what was happening with every sparrow. It should not come as a surprise to us then that God was fully aware of the plight of the Israelites. Surely there were many among those slaves calling out to God for mercy, but there were many perhaps who had given up, forgotten about God. God was still keeping an eye on them, too. And God sees the plight of families with children pouring out of Syria, Guatemala, Afghanistan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo in our world today. There are no easy answers to the problems that cause such migration, but we are called to seek solutions and offer assistance.  While it is usually beneficial to analyze what is happening to seek answers, it is a waste of precious time and resources to invest most of our energies in establishing blame.

I once had a supervisor for whom it was very important that she not be seen as the blame for anything that might have gone wrong in our challenging work with abusive and neglectful families. After spending long sessions with her where the time was mostly spent trying to fix blame, my co-workers and I discovered that we could forgo the blame game and get on about the business of addressing the issues, if in some way we would say “It was my fault, and I will never do it again.” That or a similar phrase seemed to lift the burden off her shoulders and free her to become a very good, proactive problem solver.

Jesus essentially did just that at the cross. He took the blame for all our misguided actions to free us to serve as his Body in the world today. We need to get about the business of doing just that.

Prayer: Great I AM, we thank you for the gift of your Son who frees us every day to serve you. And we thank you for hearing our cries and the cries of the oppressed. Show us what our response is to be and enable us to make it happen. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.