Moses

I was reading today’s e-mail devotional from Back to the Bible, from the devotional by Theodore Epp called Strength for the Journey. I haven’t really been enjoying this devotional, but I also haven’t taken the time to unsubscribe yet. I much prefer the Powered by 4 that I mention here. But today’s entry may change that.

It is titled “Train a Child; Affect the World” and the Scripture passage is Exodus 2:1-15. It’s about Moses being reared by his own mother in Pharaoh’s household. The line that gets me is this:

It was doubtlessly under his mother’s care that Moses trusted God for his salvation.

Pardon me? People in the Old Testament knew about trusting God for salvation? This is the guy who spent the first 40 years of his life as an Egyptian prince and the next forty years as a fugitive desert sheepherder for his father-in-law. It wasn’t until God encountered Moses in a burning bush – God being the actor here – that Moses’ life really took a dramatic turn. And he didn’t exactly leap at the opportunity to follow and serve God – he demanded a surrogate speaker from the God who can burn a bush without consuming it! That doesn’t exactly sound like “trusting for salvation” to me.

And I think the last forty years of Moses’ life had a lot more to do with the burning bush, ten plagues, divided sea, hand-carved commandment stones, rock-struck streams, and face-to-face conversations with a God who left his face glowing so much he needed a veil than anything from the first eighty years of his life. I think his mother’s rearing probably had a lot to do with his murdering an Egyptian guard at 40…..but personal trust in God as his Savior? That’s way too AD twentieth-century evangelistic crusade for me to believe it had anything to do with Moses’ spiritual life.

Besides, God, especially in the Old Testament, seems much more concerned with people groups (families, tribes, and nations) than with particular individuals apart from those groups.

Just my own thoughts and reactions.

Bethel

Today’s Scripture is from Genesis 28, when God introduces himself to Jacob for the first time and promises to fulfill the covenant He made with Abraham and Isaac through Jacob. The devotional thought that came with the text suggested that this is Jacob’s first encounter with God. I don’t know that I buy that – probably the first encounter with God of this kind, but probably not his first encounter, having grown up as the grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac. Perhaps the first personal encounter? Maybe that’s what the editor meant.

In any event, the thought went on to ask the question about the reader’s own first encounter with God. What was it like? Jacob set up conditions (“If God does this, then I will do this”), but also set up the altar that he called Bethel (“House or Dwelling Place of God”).

I don’t know if I remember my first encounter with God. In fact, I’m sure that I do not. I remember when a tropical storm (or minimal hurricane, not sure which) went over the house we were living in on the Gulf Coast, and Mom gathered us in her bedroom and prayed to God to protect us. I was young then, maybe four or five. We were fine, as was our house. Is that an encounter with God? I remember flickers of what I call my salvation experience…being in my parents’ bedroom, talking with our church’s pastor, being baptized. Is that my first encounter? I can look back and clearly see places and times where God guided me, protected me, steered me, put me in the precisely right place at the precisely right time. Are any of these my first encounter? I remember as a senior in high school, ten years after that time in my parents’ bedroom, pacing up and down the street in front of our house, trying to figure out what to do with my life (so that I could finish my college application – singular – by writing down a major), and having the assurance that I would be in full time ministry. Without a doubt. Though I had no clue what that looked like (pastor? missionary? professor?). Just that ministry was it. Because I was 18, it’s probably the most vivid encounter with God that I can remember. But I wouldn’t call it my first encounter.

I guess my first encounter came before memories started sticking in my brain. Probably my mother singing to me or praying over me (or for me, in another room). I do know that my life is different from the lives of others in the world who have not encountered God in a significant way. While I often take detours down the paths of consumerism and commercialism and materialism, I’m always drawn back. Jacob was a conniving liar who stole from his twin brother and spent the remainder of his life cowering from him, but God still chose him and always drew him back into His plan.

Sometimes I wish I had a dramatic instant-change testimony like I sometimes hear at meetings or conferences or read about in books. But then I count myself lucky that my encounter with God is lifelong, ever present. I have, at times, flirted with doubts about God’s existence or providence, but never for long. He is always with me. Just like God promised to always be with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, with their descendants. He is always with me.

That’s my Bethel.

Jonah

Jonah 4:10-11

Today’s Powered by 4 reading was Jonah 4. Jonah and Whale is a familiar to story to most anyone who grew up with any kind of a connection to the church. It’s a classic kids story. I haven’t been so faithful this week with the daily readings, mostly because I believed the four chapters of Jonah to be very familiar – tired and well worn. Not something that I need to read again, at least not this week.

I know. I should know better.

I am struck by the last two verses of the book. Jonah has been nudged not-so-gently into Nineveh. He walked three days into the city, proclaiming his message. The word gets to the king, and he declares that the whole city should repent, both man and beast. What evangelist today would not rejoice at such a turn in a city of 120,000 people – especially one with the reputation of Nineveh! Yet chapter 4 finds Jonah sulking over God’s grace towards Nineveh. He declares that this was the very reason he did not want to go to Nineveh and fled west in the first place – so God would NOT spare the city.

Jonah, sulking, goes out into the desert and sits down, waiting for the destruction of the city. God raises a vine overnight to shade him, and Jonah rejoices at the provision of shade. The next night, however, the vine is eaten away by worms, and it withers and no longer provides shade to Jonah. So he becomes even more bitter and angry. And God asks him if he has reason to be so bitter about the plant. Jonah responds that he does. And God asks, “Why the vine and not the 120,000 people of Nineveh? What makes the vine so much more worthwhile than they?”

How often have we fallen into the same trap, caring more for the fleeting things of life – the iPod or iPhone or dinner out or seeing the movie that’s getting all of the buzz or not missing an episode of our favorite show or cleaning out the dirt under our nails rather than the world that is dying around us? Are the people around us not of more worth than those other things?

It is a trap into which I easily fall. I pray that I will become more attuned to the world around me. To see more with God’s eyes. To place my time, effort, and energy into things that are lasting and worthwhile rather than fleeting.

Devotions

I have tried many different means of of getting a regular devotional going in the mornings. I know the importance of it, but it always gets lost in the shuffle of the morning routine rather than becoming part of the morning (or afternoon or evening). One thing I do every morning without fail is check my e-mail and Google Reader, so when I keep looking for some devotional that can be sent by one of those means. Then I run into the problem that what I find is just uninteresting to me. Terrible to say that the Bible is uninteresting! Anyway, I found something that I have been enjoying for the past several weeks. It’s an e-mail devotional put out by back to the Bible, called Powered by 4.

I like the premise. Every good Evangelical Christian (okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but at least the ones I’ve been connected with) knows that you’re supposed to read your Bible every day. How many of us do it? Powered by 4 sets a goal that readers follow through at least 4 times per week (hence the “by 4″ part). And it is really simple: they send an e-mail with a passage to read (so far, it’s been one chapter), then there are several questions at the bottom to help the reader think on the passage.

My problem with devotions is this: after so much Greek, Hebrew, theology, and the like as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, I find a lot of devotionals unhelpful. I recognize that they are helpful to a lot of people, so I don’t want to discount them. But they don’t help me for whatever reason. I’m too cerebral, possibly. But many of the books or guides I’ve found come across to me as trite and shallow. In all likelihood, they aren’t really. I’m sure my own biases prevent me from seeing the gold that is in them to be mined. But I never find gold.

And as much as I would like to commit to reading through the Bible every year (I have one plan fed to me daily in Google Reader), that doesn’t happen either. So Powered by 4 works well for me. I don’t have to figure out where to go next to read – it’s decided for me. It’s not an overwhelming length of text to consider like the Bible in a year plans typically are. There is enough to get context and find something to chew on for the day. So I encourage you to check it out if you have been looking for a plan of your own to follow. Maybe we can work up to 4 days a week (or more!) together.

Let me know how it goes.