I Am Here
Our Journey begins with a bondage that many of us have experienced in our own lives. Some of us know how a prolonged illness makes us captive to our rooms, our beds, our floors. Others of us know what it is like to be doing what we do not want to do or even approve of so perpetually that we don’t even know how to ask for help. Others of us know what it is to have suffered loss in ways that makes the air feel so heavy all we can do is sigh. This weight of being bound by circumstance, stuck in forced patterns of behavior, dreading the future is where we begin:
…the sons of Israel groaned because of their bondage. They cried out and their sighs of anguish went up to God.
Exodus 2:23
Although the heaviness of their suffering was too much to put into words, because of His love, God hears the deep sighs of His people and comes to them.
This is why the Lord doesn’t merely evacuate His people, but first appears within the thicket to address suffering at its core. He promises a liberation from the discouragement, hatred, and grief gripping His people on the inside as well as the rescue from circumstance that they asked for.
And knowing their sorrow, I am come down to deliver them from the power of Egypt, and to bring them up out of that land, to a good and spacious land, flowing with milk and honey…
Exodus 3:8
Our journey together follows the Lord’s expressions of love among His people that empower them to move out from terror and beyond suffering into safety and rest, a process that continues long after leaving Egypt. My prayer for each of us as we continue on together is that we will grow in knowing the One who knows and loves us, and so live increasingly free and at home in His love.
More food for thought:
God’s presence deprives pain of its power to destroy, even while it remains.
This song is one that my mom sang in the middle of debilitating sickness. I offer it now at the start of this journey so that you too can experience the peace that comes from having a God who loves you in the midst of your suffering, darkness, and night.
