Category: Isaiah

Exodus 5:15 Then the Israelite overseers went and appealed to Pharaoh: “Why have you treated your servants this way? 

Today’s scripture has me going back to Isaiah 55:8 again, “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” What is happening here, as God sets in motion the ultimate freedom of the Israelites, is painful and unfair and makes no sense to me.

Exodus 5:16 Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told, ‘Make bricks!’ Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people.”

But I am a mere mortal who can’t see the eternal picture, and God didn’t promise to make life make sense to me. He promised never to leave me, never to forsake me. So when I am confronted with huge injustices, with senseless tragedies, with painful realities, I have to fall back on Isaiah 55:8 and trust that in His sovereign, compassionate wisdom, all of this will work to my good and His glory….even if I cannot yet perceive it.

Exodus 5:17 Pharaoh said, “Lazy, that’s what you are—lazy! That is why you keep saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ 

Precious Savior, Thank You for the eternal reality that You will never leave me nor forsake me. NEVER. Forgive me when I yearn for explanations and sense in situations that I can never understand. Help me, always, to trust You. Help me, Jesus. Amen.

Exodus 5:18 Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.”

Have a blessed day.

Exodus 3:9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 

Verse 9 bothers me because it sounds like God wasn’t hearing or wasn’t paying attention to the Israelites, like they are a long way from God and their cries have finally reached His ear. That seems antithetical to what I know of my Savior.

Exodus 3:10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

Isaiah 42:3 says “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice….” That, to me, does not sound like a God who is removed from His people, who doesn’t know what’s going on, who has to wait for their cries to finally reach His ear before noticing their pain and distress.

Exodus 3:11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

God of the Oppressed, I do not understand suffering–why it happens, why You allow it, why we have to endure it–but I believe with every fiber of my being that we do not suffer alone, that You are with us in our pain, making a way in our wilderness, even if we cannot yet perceive Your presence or Your actions. Thank You that You will never leave us nor forsake us. Amen.

Exodus 3:12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

Have a blessed day.

Exodus 2:21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 

Verse 24 bothers me. The idea that God “remembered his covenant” seems to me to imply that he forgot it at some point. Commentary says that is not so, that “remembered” in this sense means “turn his attention to” instead of “think of again after forgetting.”

Exodus 2:22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”

These ponderings put me in mind of Isaiah 43:19, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Times that feel to us like being forgotten are actually times where God is working, making a way in our wilderness that we can’t even perceive yet. I think God loves us way too much to forget about us.

Exodus 2:23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 

Precious Savior, Thank You for Your fierce and abiding love. We can’t do a single thing but love and praise You, and we often do that so very imperfectly, but You love us beyond measure simply because we are Yours. Help us to always remember that, especially when we feel forgotten, broken, alone. We are Yours. Always. Thank You, Jesus. Amen.

Exodus 2:24-25 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

Have a blessed day.

Exodus 2:5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it.

Isaiah 55:8 comes to mind as I read today’s scripture: “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.”

Exodus 2:6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

I am absolutely certain that whatever this mother had imagined for her son, this was not it. That he would be raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter. That she, his mother, would get to continue to nurture and love him, no longer in secret.

Exodus 2:7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

Precious Savior, Thank You that Your ways are beyond anything we can imagine. Forgive us that we think we know the plans You have for us, we hope and dream and plan and don’t even realize we aren’t dreaming big enough, bold enough. Help us to trust You. Always. Amen.

Exodus 2:8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother.

Have a blessed day.