Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Mud Pit Christianity

Yesterday was Monday. Not only was it Monday, but it was a Monday of Mondays. It was a Monday through and through. If you do not know what that means you may as well stop reading now because we obviously do not understand one another. When I finally collapsed into bed at night, I lay staring at the ceiling in the ever darkening room. It is in this state I usually have my most brilliant thoughts.

To explain what I was thinking, I need to give a short Biblical history lesson.

In the book of Genesis there is a man named Israel. He has 12 sons, one of which was named Joseph. Joseph was Israel's favorite son and because of the father's favoritism, a divide was created between Joseph and his brothers. His brothers took Joseph and sold him into slavery in the land of Egypt. As history tells it, Joseph later became one of the most powerful men in that land and saved everyone from a famine. During the height of his power, Joseph sends for his father, Israel to come to Egypt to avoid the famine. Israel was an old man by this time, and was fearful about making the hard journey. Israel turns to God in his trouble and God says to him that he will be with him when he goes down into Egypt and that God will also be with him and bring him back out of Egypt. (Please  note, that by many biblical scholars, Egypt is considered metaphorically to often represent the world system, or our struggles, enemies, temptations, etc. as well as the literal sense used in this case.).

God does do all that he has promised for the man Israel, but his decedents (which as a nation are also called Israel) suffer much in Egypt.  Israel (now we are referring to the nation) ends up falling into slavery to the Egyptians. Through many miracles at the hand of God they are freed though and lead into the wilderness where they travel for 40 years getting to know God, before they are finally lead into the plentiful land promised to them. While in the wilderness, they were on a sandy, flat plane. They didn't have the overseers whipping them as they had faced in Egypt. They didn't have chariots chasing them as they had when fleeing through the red sea. They had a calm, still place where they could finally worship God.

Here in the wilderness where they could have had such peace is where we see Israel turn away from God. To put it nicely, they turn into complaining, bitter, self-centered children. God had finally answered their prayers and removed them from their hardest battles but in the quietness they became bored and stagnant. They created other gods to worship, complained about food, complained about water and even said that they wish they were back in Egypt as slaves.

God became angry at this and sent poisonous snakes into the midst of the camp. God told the leader Moses to put a brazen serpent up on a staff and whoever looked to the brazen serpent (biblical scholars speak of this as an example of Christ raised up on the cross to save us) would be saved from the venomous bite. Israel looked up to the brazen serpent, and looked to God again and were saved.

We think Egypt was their problem. We think 'Egypt' is our problem. We think our bondage, or our trial is our problem. Our problem isn't the trial, but that we give up turning to God unless we are going through a trial.

How much grief could we save ourselves if we didn't forget God ever time the sun shined? If Israel hadn't complained every step of the way through the desert perhaps God would never have sent the snakes to their camp... and perhaps if I could remember every once in a while that God loves me and wants a relationships with me, I wouldn't have to get to the point of a terrible Monday with a bad attitude to turn to God again in my heart.

People put down the faith of a 'fair weather Christians'. This is someone who loves God only when the sun shines. I hear all the time about 'girding up your loins' and 'be a Christian in the trenches'. I think it would be a great success to be a Christian in the fair weather, and not just when the sea gets rough. I want to put on my rain coat when the storms come, but also pull out my sun hat on those warm balmy days and walk with God though it all.

Let my dry calm desert be a place I turn to God just as quickly as I would in my mud pit in Egypt. Keep a complaining spirit far from me and the bitterness that comes with it.

...such were my thoughts as I lay looking at my ceiling.


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