WHEN YOUR ENEMY WANTS A BLESSING. . . (Exodus 12)

At last Pharaoh had had enough. It took the death of his firstborn son, but he couldn't get rid of the Israelites soon enough. In so many words, he said "Skedaddle! You, your wives, your children, your livestock, your belongings. Don't let the door hit you on the way out." 

At the end of his frantic plea for Moses and the Israelites to leave, Pharaoh tacks on a strange request "and bless me."

After God had devastated Egypt's livestock, crops, people, water--why did Pharaoh think Moses would agree to bless him?

Why did Pharaoh want a blessing from this stranger's God?

I think it might be as simple as this: In asking for a blessing, Pharaoh laid his last bit of pride on the line. The word for blessing is connected to the word for "kneel." The author of Hebrews says that the greater blesses the lesser.

By asking for a blessing, Pharaoh admitted that Moses and his God were powerful that Egypt and its gods. 


Here's my great, "spiritual" takeaway: Sometimes a blessing is the best revenge. 

TELLING YOUR STORY (Exodus 10)

I've made him stubborn, him and his servants, so I can force him to look at these signs, and so you'll be able to tell your children. (Genesis 10:1-2, MSG)

God made Pharaoh stubborn for two reasons: the first was make  him look at the signs God sent. I'm focusing on the second: "So you'll be able to tell your children."

In the words of a song popular when I was in college, "if I never had a problem, I wouldn't know God could solve them."  

Times God came through when all seemed hopeless--those are the stories God wants me to tell my children and grandchildren. There's the Christmas God gave us a microwave (important since we only had a stovetop). How about all those contracts I received just as an expense cropped up? Or when God gave us the apartment of our dreams? 

If I hadn't known poverty, or illness, or homelessness, or grief--I wouldn't know how God could work in those situations.

In a way, that's why I started this blog: God has done things for me that I'm bursting to share with others. 

I'd love to hear some of your stories, about times God has acted on your behalf. 

PHARAOH'S FINAL SOLUTION (Exodus 1)

Every boy that is born, throw him in the Nile. (Exodus 1:22, MSG)

Pharaoh wasn't happy that the Hebrews were growing in numbers. He made them slaves, he gave them the hardest possible work, and when that didn't slow the birth rate, he commanded the midwives to kill all Hebrew boy babies. 

The midwives refused, and then Pharaoh took a radical course. He offered his final solution to the problem of too many Hebrews. (Hitler was far from the first to try to get rid of the Jewish people.)

This much of the story I knew. But I saw something different when I read Exodus 1:22 in The Message. I read it once, then went back and read it a second time. Then I looked at Exodus 1:22 in all forty translations included in Bible Gateway. A small majority, 5/8ths, say "Hebrews boys." 

The remaining 3/8ths, almost half? They simply say that Pharaoh ordered every boy to be thrown into the Nile. 

Pharaoh was so obsessed with getting rid of the Hebrews, that he was willing to kill his own people to achieve his aims. 

I bet there were a lot of Egyptian parents wondering why . . . questioning their own gods--their king. Why does a Supreme Being allow this to happen? 

A little more than a month has passed since the Sandy Hook shootings. I lived in Denver at the time of the Columbine shootings, and now I live in Oklahoma City, where a national memorial was raised to honor the victims of the bombings. 

Why does evil happen to good people? Why does evil so often target the most innocent and most vulnerable, our children? No one can visit the National Memorial in the heart of Oklahoma City without being shaken by the nineteen child-sized chairs, representing the day care children who died. 

I have no easy answers--the possibility of evil is implicit in our freedom to choose--but I take comfort in this verse from the end of Exodus 2:  "God listened to their groanings. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw what was going on with Israel. God understood."

God understood. And He acted. 

In my favorite words ever heard on television, from a long-defunct comedy that I can't even name anymore, "God's heart was the first to break." 

When the Israelites cried out, God understood and He sent Moses.

When I trusted Jesus as my Savior, God intervened and removed the man who had abused me for six years of my life. He listened--and He acted. 

That is the only answer I've found that eases the hurt. God sees, and He cares.

God understands. That's a truth we can grab onto.