Do you ever find yourself occasionally longing for another
time or place in your life? A time when
you recall certain things or circumstances with fondness, and you have a desire
to return there, if only for a moment? I
know that I do.
For me some of these longings include a time with my
children or a particular scene on a vacation. And in all honesty, in my case more
often than not these longings involve running.
I'll be out on my run and find my mind wandering back to a particular day
and I long to be able to run at a certain pace again, or to re-live a particular
competitive moment. Those days are, as
they say, in the history books. I might
recall them fondly but there is no going back.
When I was a new Christian I used to look back on some of my
sins that way. Sure, I had learned that
I shouldn't do them because God said so, but they felt so good! It hardly seemed right that something that
delighted me in a particular way should have to be left at the wayside. Turns out that for God's people this is a way
of looking at things that is very old, and likely very common.
I was reading from Exodus and the Hebrews were in a tough
spot. They were fleeing from slavery in
Egypt and reached the Red Sea, a seemingly impassable barrier. Faced with the sea in front, they also know that
the army of Egypt is chasing them and closing in from behind. And so in this predicament the people cry out
to Moses, saying:
"What
have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt:
"Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve
the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."
The Hebrew people see the choice starkly. Serve as slaves or die in the wilderness. What they have lost track of is the fact that
they are God's chosen people and that they are in the wilderness because He is
leading them there. In a moment of
crisis they long for the familiarity of slavery.
But the thing is that God loves them too much to let them
remain as slaves. He is leading them to
freedom. The road may be bumpy but He
is, as they say, "driving the bus."
This God, the One True God, is doing the same thing
today. He is reaching into the lives of
His children, snatching them from slavery to sin, and setting them free. And I might add that He does this without
asking anyone's permission.
As a person grows as a Christian they learn that those
"good old days," separated from Christ and oblivious to that fact, weren't
so good. They learn that those sins that
felt so good weren't just an illusion.
They were a delusion.
As a child of God, know that God loves you too much to let you stay in slavery to sin. He has set you
free in Christ and He is taking you to an infinitely better destination. The road may be rough at times but nothing
will compare to the joy you'll know when you arrive. Amen.
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