I enjoyed reading this reflection from Exodus90.com as I am in the end of 90 days of fraternity in the Lord with two other brothers in Christ. I thought to share with you! What touched me was the courageous path God is calling us into, daring asking God something that is impossible. Also if God’s presence is not with us in the journey we should stop and ask for confirmation that our path is what God has for us.
The Lord said to Moses, “Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ And I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you in the way, for you are a stiff-necked people” …
Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, I beg you, if I have found favor in your sight, show me now your ways, that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from all other people that are upon the face of the earth?” And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “I beg you, show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
As Christian men, we are called to live a life of heroic virtue. Today, Moses gives us a clinic on how to live out heroic virtue, especially faith and courage. After God speaks to Moses about distancing himself from Israel, Moses responds courageously. He begs God the Father to remain with him and the Israelites.
Who are we apart from our fathers? Orphans. When a young boy sees his father leaving for a long work trip he cries out, “Don’t go!” A boy inherently knows his need for his father. He equally knows his identity as his son, and thus, is willing to demand his father’s presence.
When we fail to speak to the all-good Father, it is sometimes due to lack of courage. Often, though, the virtue we lack isn’t courage; it’s faith. Too often, we lack faith that God is a good father and that we truly are his sons. Our failure to cry out to the Father is an outward sign of our inward identity crisis as sons of God.
Moses has faith in his sonship and in God’s paternity. When he cries out to God today for something that is good for him (and in keeping with God’s purposes), he receives what he asks for. Knowing that he has favor in God’s sight, Moses asks for even more. By a request that shows the deepest desire of his heart and that surely delighted his creator, he asks to see the very face of God. Though Moses does not receive the answer to his request in its fullness, he is given as much of God’s shining glory as he can handle in his mortal state.
The Lord has so much he wants to give us. Often, we are simply too faithless or too cowardly to ask. Ask the Lord in prayer today for greater faith in his paternity and for greater courage to speak to him from your sonship for everything you need.
Brother Endrit Journey 