Advent Season
Week 48 Day 3
Pray
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
Ex. 2:23-3:7 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. 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. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Reflect:
Moses became a waiter but he was first an “at risk child.” He was placed by his mom into a basket and put afloat in the river. This seems like a reckless way of protecting a baby but it was her desperate attempt to keep him from a certain death. God, of course, intervened and Moses then became royalty. Scripture fast forward’s Moses early years. In one verse he is being rescued from the River, in the next verse he is all grown up. Those years probably did go by quickly for Moses; they were likely years of ease and privilege. But then the clock slowed down for him. The next approximately forty-years were spent herding sheep. It wasn’t that Moses knew he was waiting on God’s timing to go and lead the nation out of Egypt, he didn’t. But it was true nonetheless that God was teaching him how to wait. Specifically he was teaching him how to wait on sheep. A shepherd leads his sheep but he does a whole lot of waiting on the sheep. He waits for them to eat, and they are never in a hurry to eat. He waits on them to sleep, and protects them through the night watches. God was training Moses to wait on his people, he would shepherd them through forty years of wandering. Waiting can feel like nothing significant is happening. When we are active, doing, working…then it feels like we are actually “living life.” Waiting feels like life is slipping away, like we are missing out. But waiting is living and living is waiting. Waiting only feels like a waste when we do so disconnected from God and his larger purposes in our lives. To simply wait for the seasons to turn and then finally for our last breathe, this truly is meaningless waiting. But to wait on God, to serve with our very lives at his pleasure…this is the only meaningful life. If he says to “go, be active, accomplish” then we do so and it matters what we do. If he says “be still, wait” then we do so and it matters what we do. All humans enter life waiting. Waiting to be held, to be fed, and to be changed. We are at the mercy of others. Many humans end this life in the same way they began it; waiting. Frailty or illness removes our ability to act freely; we are once again at the mercy and the timing of others. In between infancy and end of the life…we would do well to remember and to reflect on our lives as waiters of the living God. Working or waiting…living or dying…in Him alone we find purpose.
Pray after reading:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.