Between the Rock and Hard Place

 

Thursday, March 3, 2022

So the slave drivers and foremen went out and told the people: “This is what Pharaoh says:  I will not provide any more straw for you.   Go and get it yourselves.  Find it wherever you can.  But you must produce just as many bricks as before!”  So the people scattered throughout the land of Egypt in search of stubble to use as straw.  Meanwhile, the Egyptian slave drivers continued to push hard.  “Meet your daily quota of bricks, just as you did when we provided you with straw!” they demanded.  Then they whipped the Israelite foremen they had put in charge of the work crews.  “Why haven’t you met your quotas either yesterday or today?” they demanded.  So the Israelite foremen went to Pharaoh and pleaded with him.  “Please don’t treat your servants like this,” they begged.  “We are given no straw, but the slave drivers still demand, ‘Make bricks!’  We are being beaten, but it isn’t our fault!  Your own people are to blame!”  But Pharaoh shouted, “You’re just lazy!  Lazy!  That’s why you’re saying, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifices to the Lord.’  Now get back to work!  No straw will be given to you, but you must still produce the full quota of bricks.”  The Israelite foremen could see that they were in serious trouble when they were told, “You must not reduce the number of bricks you make each day.”  As they left Pharaoh’s court, they confronted Moses and Aaron, who were waiting outside for them.  The foremen said to them, “May the Lord judge and punish you for making us stink before Pharaoh and his officials.  You have put a sword into their hands, an excuse to kill us!”  Then Moses went back to the Lord and protested, “Why have you brought all this trouble on your own people, Lord?  Why did you send me?  Ever since I came to Pharaoh as your spokesman, he has been even more brutal to your people.  And you have done nothing to rescue them!”  Exodus 5:10-23

Four hundred years in captivity was a hard place.  The descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were conscripts of Pharaoh’s dynasty.  They were forced to work endlessly just to stay alive, and had nothing.  Then things really got hard.

Bondage is brutal – and that is certainly an understatement.  Not just Israel, but humanity has been under something of bondage to COVID-19 and its cousins the past two years.  Even if you have been blessed enough to have escaped having the virus, you know someone, perhaps many, who have had to tough it out like making bricks without straw.

You’ve also seen what happens when the rock of struggle meets the hard place of frustration…someone must take the blame.  Pharaoh, like any pandemic virus, was an iron-fisted, hard-hearted tyrant.  He threatened, bullied, and killed.  His soldiers spread the virus of hate and oppression.  The people, frustrated, having no place to turn for relief, blamed Moses for stirring up Pharaoh’s anger.  Moses went right to prayer….and blamed God!

Just a few plagues later, the slaves were seeing Egypt in the rearview mirror.  Forty years later Moses saw the Promised Land from the mountaintop.  But none of the original group, including Moses, ever set foot on the other side of Jordan. 

The conclusion is rather rock-like:  Blaming someone else for your problems will get you somewhere, and it’s often a harder place than the rock you were facing.

For You Today

When the temptation comes for you to blame someone, some pandemic, some circumstances, or God, for whatever trouble presents, let your prayer of surrender to God’s will and care turn blame into blessing.  

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©    

Destroyed

 

Friday, May 15, 2020

Genesis 7:1-5, 17-24

When everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous.  Take with you seven pairs—male and female—of each animal I have approved for eating and for sacrifice, and take one pair of each of the others.  Also take seven pairs of every kind of bird. There must be a male and a female in each pair to ensure that all life will survive on the earth after the flood.  Seven days from now I will make the rains pour down on the earth. And it will rain for forty days and forty nights, until I have wiped from the earth all the living things I have created.”  So Noah did everything as the Lord commanded him.

For forty days the floodwaters grew deeper, covering the ground and lifting the boat high above the earth.  As the waters rose higher and higher above the ground, the boat floated safely on the surface.  Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, rising more than twenty-two feet above the highest peaks.  All the living things on earth died—birds, domestic animals, wild animals, small animals that scurry along the ground, and all the people.  Everything that breathed and lived on dry land died.  God wiped out every living thing on the earth—people, livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and the birds of the sky.  All were destroyed. The only people who survived were Noah and those with him in the boat.  And the floodwaters covered the earth for 150 days.

There are plenty of disasters from which to choose an image:

·       Wildfires in California destroying subdivisions and memories

·       Tsunamis in Indonesia decimating coastline life

·       Terrorist attacks and the incredible stench of death’s aftermath

·       People standing dazed in the rubble after a tornado

Noah is the poster child for disaster.  Yet, the magnitude of the destruction of that global flood is largely contained in just two paragraphs; essentially it boils down to:  God said he’d wipe the earth clean, and it was so. 

Just like the account of creation, God said – and there was!

This morning, when I went to the computer to post today’s devotion, I found the tech version of Noah’s world; everything was gone.  The physical computer machine was there, looking all innocent and 21^st century put-together, like the Earth after the flood.  But, when I booted up the criminal, all my files were under the deepest blue sea.  Here last night; gone this morning.  What now?  I felt the electronic equivalent of being cut-off from the past 40 years of ministry records, sermons, correspondence, bills, and (oh, my) FACEBOOK. 

I spent the next hour muddled in confusion about what to do next and recriminations over not being more diligent with backing up my files; I also prayed fervently…Oh, LORD, if you’ll just give me back my files I’ll be good….

I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but one word popped into my technologically-challenged brain – RESTART.  So, I did, and voilà, my files were back, and now I’m writing the next devotion. 

Noah wasn’t so lucky.  Or, was he?

There are two hinges to consider here:

·       Hinge #1.  God said He was going to do a new thing

·       Hinge #2.  God did it.

God told Noah to get in the boat, and then God closed the door on the previous chapter.  Then God opened a new chapter for the righteous man and his family.  This begs the question that is frequently my cling-to thought whenever it seems my world might fall apart (or be flooded over to 22 feet above the mountaintops):

What could be better than being in the center of God’s will?

Even when He decides it’s time for a restart?

For You Today

Our new normal after the virus flood is (at this moment) just a foreboding.  I’m not sure I’ve seen any pairs of animals gathering by twos…but, stay tuned, you never know what God is up to; our only certainty is the cross and an empty tomb.  Everything else is like what Noah left behind.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on “Flood Recovery in Genesis see “After the Storm” Part 1 and  Part 2