Today’s
Scripture Reading (May 27, 2012): Exodus 8
Be careful what you wish for. I think it is one of the common mistakes
that we make. I remember applying for a job a number of years ago and a variant
of that saying was spoken to me by a friend. I was deep in want for the
position, but being in deep want I was also not being very objective. I saw all
of the good things that the position would bring, but had minimized the bad.
All I knew was that my life would totally change if only I could get the job.
Whenever I do premarital counselling, it is the one thing that I am on
the lookout for. I hate it when couple’s say that they were “made for each
other.” I rail against the idea that someone has found the match that God had
created for them since the beginning of time. It is a romantic idea, but I also
know the other end of the story – the one that starts with the pressures of
life, and diapers and bottles and nights with no sleep. It is into that moment
that people often discover that maybe the one they were so head over heels in
love with was not the one that was created for them – and armed with their new
found realization they begin to look for the one that they were created for someone
else. The bottom line is that at some point I wanted the job, or the marriage,
but I had an idealistic idea of what that would be like. I needed to be careful
what I wished for.
Pharaoh is starting to show some of the same tendencies. At the
beginning of the story of Moses, all the King wanted to do was rid himself of a
people that was growing strong within his borders. He was asking the same
question that I hear asked in our culture – if a war breaks out, who will Israel
(or for us it has been the Japanese or the Islamic populations within our
borders) fight for. Pharaoh was not sure of the answer, so he decided to take
steps to get rid of the people in question. But eighty years later a different
king had begun to think very differently. He no longer wants Israel to leave –
now he fears a day when Israel will no longer provide for him the cheap labor
his projects demand. What his father wished for, the son was worried that the
dream just might come true.
Real life situations very seldom come with absolute good or total evil.
Usually it is a mixture of the two, and when we get idealistic about a
situation we are setting ourselves up for failure. Life doesn’t work that way,
and even the good things in life need us to be willing to persevere through the
dark times. And often the bad situations of life come with an incredible good,
if we will only look for it.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: Exodus 9
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