Thoughts on moving on

Well, I’m done with VBI. I have turned in and passed all my assignments. So now it’s just waiting for my diploma. It’s almost august, and I thought by now I would be on to my next step. But even though that’s not the case, I’m ok with it most days. It means I’ve been around for things that I didn’t really want to miss. I’ll be around for Engram (our summer youth program) in August. Even though I’m not as involved as I was last year (only this last week have I really begun to mentally prepare myself for being here for engram) maybe that’s a good thing. I think it will be a good week, and I need to remember that I’m not there for myself. That’s what made Toronto ’06 so memorable: I was there for the students and the more I got excited over what God was doing with them the more I could focus on Him. Funny how that works…the less caught up I am about myself the more I hear God speaking.

The theme for Engram this year is based off the Israelite exodus out to worship. And I’ve been thinking about that whole story (all of Moses’ life really). There are a lot of things I am noticing about God’s character in that story. Moses faced death even before he could talk. His parents knew there was something special about him and the only thing they could think to do was risk sending him down the river in the hope he would be saved. I heard somewhere that the future of Israel rested on whether or not a baby survived. That’s a pretty big risk when I think about it. But even then God was not worried that everything would fall apart.

Years later Moses is called by God. What his parents saw was God’s hand in his life, and it finally came about. God tells him what he wants to do, and it’s a big deal. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to see such an amazing thing (a whole nation’s freedom). But Moses didn’t want it at first. God even got angry at him for rejecting his destiny. But Moses finally agreed (after Aaron was brought in to help).

God proceeds to show His power in very calculated ways against Egypt. Each plague is a direct sign to Egypt that the gods they serve are dead (the Nile to blood for example was a sign that the Nile god had been killed and the river carried his blood). Pharaoh was raised with a hard heart so that God’s power would be displayed. It took the death of his first born male to break him (and even then he chose to go after the Israelites in pursuit).

Crossing the Red sea must have been a scary turning point for Moses and the rest of Israel. Freedom is a great thing, but it’s scary when all you’ve known is a life of slavery. All Israel knew for the last 400 years was slavery. No one alive among them knew what it was really like to be free. And now they were going to the unknown desert to serve God and to enter a land they knew almost nothing about. I would imagine that while slavery wasn’t easy it was what they knew.

For me this is where I feel I relate. I’m crossing out of Oak Park and all my familiar surroundings and entering new territory. It’s exciting and I’m looking forward to it. But I’m also being challenged to move to a deeper level of belief in God. There have been times where God has spoken about my future and that He has a plan for me. And like Moses’ parents I have to trust that He knows what He’s doing. And like Israel standing at the shore of the Red sea, I have to believe that I will cross over in safety and on dry ground. It’s easy to hear something but hard to do what it takes to get there. It’s been a long two years here, and now it’s actually coming to an end. Kind of surreal in some ways.

Even once Israel reached freedom, they still had to fight. The freedom was challenged again and again. It’s like that with destiny. It’s not a one shot deal. It’s a constant event. And it happens when we surrender our lives to God every day.