Spiritual Alzheimer’s, Week 4 Day 4, Exodus 14

Spiritual Alzheimer’s, Week 4 Day 4, Exodus 14

The people of Israel had a hard time being convinced that this whole deliverance thing would actually work out.  Guess you really can’t blame them given the history.  They’ve been slaves for a long time.  Then Moses showed up had a chat with Pharaoh and things got worse.  “Keep making bricks but now you have to gather your own straw.”  You can go, you can’t go.  You can go, you can’t go.  It doesn’t really seem like God and this Moses character really have their act together.

So, after the final plague, the death of the first born, Pharaoh tells them to go and worship their God.  So they get out of Dodge, ah Egypt, with all their belongings and a lot of stuff from the Egyptian neighbors too.  But they aren’t out of trouble yet.

Pharaoh has another change of heat and decides to bring the Israelites back.  He chases after them chariots, officers, horsemen and troops.  And when the Israelites see that they are trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the sea they panic and cry out to God.   Trapped between an army and a wet place.  To Moses they say, “Was it because there were not enough graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?  What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?  Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians?’  It would be better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

They forgot.  They forgot that they had been slaves.  They forgot that Pharaoh had been killing their sons.  They forgot what God had done in the lives of their fathers.  They forgot the plagues that had led to their release.  They forgot the death of the Egyptians’ first born while their first born were spared.  That’s a whole lot of forgetting.  I guess they really needed some convincing.  Either that or maybe they needed some lessons in memory and recall.

They have a kind of spiritual Alzheimer’s disease.  They forgot what their life was like.  They forgot what God had already done.  And, spoiler alert, they’re going to keep on forgetting.   Yeah, I cheated and read ahead.

What ‘s God got to do to get their attention, to keep their attention? 

How about a rout of the Egyptian army while leading them across the Red Sea on dry land?  That should get their attention.  But their track record of remembering isn’t very memorable.   They’re kind of a what have you done for me lately kind of people.  Forget the past, good or bad, and look only at the present trouble.

And sure enough, God saves them and we leave today’s passage with the proclamation, “And the Israelites' saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant.”

How long will that last?

And how good is my memory?  Do I remember what God has done in my life forty years ago, twenty years ago, ten years ago, five years ago, last month, last week or even yesterday?  We talk about faith as though it built on nothing.  But real faith is built on a relationship and a history of God being present in our lives, of God working in our lives.  Now for that be true you have to have seen times in your life where God has worked.

Maybe you’ve never crossed the Red Sea.  But what is your history with God?  Yeah, that first step might be a blind one.  But after that you should have a history and a relationship to build on.

I wonder how the Israelites felt as they walked across the Red Sea on dry land but with a wall of water on both sides.  I would be very nervous, and I know how to swim.  Those first steps had to be tentative ones, cautions ones.

But they've started a journey with the Lord God Almighty.  Just as I started my journey quite a number of years back.  I need to remember the start.  I need to remember the seas that I’ve crossed.  I need to remember what it is that I left behind and how different it is from where I am now.  All that history of God working in my life is there to help me take another step with God.  Always remembering the steps we’ve taken together in the past.  God has been trustworthy so far.  If I can remember that then maybe I can trust Him today.

God, give me a good memory.  Bring to mind how You have worked in my life in the past.  Burn it in my mind and into my heart.  Help me to recall those things when face with a new plague, a new army, a new sea.  God, never let me forget You.  Never.  Amen

Leonard