I Am Here
Our Journey together starts in Exodus with a bondage similar in quality to what many of us have known. It is one of being bound by circumstance, stuck in forced patterns of behavior, weighed down by dread of the future. Some of us experienced this oppression from a prolonged illness that made us captive to our homes, our rooms, our beds. Others of us have struggled with doing what we do not want to do – whether with food, drink, or drugs – we have known a compulsion that takes hold so strongly that there seems no way to ask for help. Others of us have grieved loss that turned our breathing into heavy sighs. This is where we begin: with a suffering too painful for words.
…the sons of Israel groaned because of their bondage. They cried out and their sighs of anguish went up to God.
Exodus 2:23
God hears the groans and comes to save not with destructive violence but with a love for mankind kindled amid our pain and sorrow. He appears as a flame of fire within a bramble of thorns and speaks from inside the thicket about how He has seen, heard, and known the anguish of His people.
He knows how the burden of bondage is so profound that a simple change in circumstance won’t undo the pain. He knows that we will walk away with wounds that require a patience and wisdom that only come from having lived through what we endured. So, He comes down to bring His people up, dwelling with them in the land until they leave Egypt and are ready to enter their new home. Generations later, God appeared again, to live and walk alongside us, to eat, laugh, and weep through life with us. He revealed His love among thorns once more; not in a surrounding bush but wrapped around His head as He died for us on the Cross. Just as God did not destroy the thorns but revealed by blazing amid them His own willingness to be present with our suffering in a deep way, He did not avoid the violence and death that bound all of humanity. Instead, He revealed His love through it by allowing it to pierce Him completely through and to crown Him with a depth of understanding. Only such a One who knows our suffering and loves us any and every way can be trusted to take us all the way home. Liberation from bondage is one thing; healing from its effect is the promise of Love. We have both in God: the Resurrection and the Life; the Deliverance and the Dwelling place.
I pray that as God spoke to Moses when he stopped to look more closely at the burning bush, each of you would hear personally from God as you join me in beholding Him. May the glimpse we have today of how His love burns bright and unchanged by thorns and death draw you closer, and may the delay in circumstance changing cause you to know His abiding presence in your midst. The I Am who I Am is who He is, always and ever faithful, continually knowing and loving you no matter what condition you are in or where on earth you are. May we all become increasingly free and at home in His love as we go from image to image and glory to glory. Amen!
Your Invitation to the Journey Home can be watched again here:
