Exodus 16:1-10
Intro self
Intro series
Today we’re going to begin by looking at a clip of an experience Pastor Rob had while in Nepal. He found out there was a United Methodist Church in Katmandu and he reached out, wanting to visit. The night before the service that he was going to attend, the pastor emailed him to confirm, and said, “so to confirm, you’ll preach and I’ll translate.”
That was NOT exactly what Rob had in mind, but it’s not the BEST look to say no to that kind of invitation. So here’s a bit of what he shared while he was with this congregation, to frame what we’re looking at today:
Show Clip of Rob Preaching (3:23)
Today we’re looking at this idea of what it means to be surrounded by God’s presence and glory, even if all we get is a small glimpse of it, when we are in moments of struggle. When things aren’t going easily or according 2
to plan. When we aren’t quite sure how to solve the problem we’re facing or even just keep going when it feels really difficult.
And we’re looking at a story out of the book of Exodus to guide this conversation. And this is one of my very favorite narratives in the whole Bible because I think this story of the ancient Israelites leaving Egypt and journeying toward a new life in a new place is one of the best examples of what it looks like for God to love people and for people to trust God, even in the middle of some really tough circumstances.
Because when we’re in a season of struggle, it can be hard to remember those two things: that God loves us and that we can trust God. Those are two of the things that can seem the most far away and hardest to see when we’re in the middle of something that feels sort of all-encompassing.
And so one of the first things we are reminded of in the Exodus story is that (SLIDE) God pays attention when we struggle. This is a pattern all throughout this story. When we first enter the Exodus narrative, the Israelites 3
are living in slavery in Egypt, in terrible conditions, and they are crying out to God for something to change.
And God hears them. And God acts.
Then, once they get away from the Egyptians, they are free, but life isn’t easy. They are in the wilderness, sort of wandering, trying to figure out exactly where they will end up and what it will take to survive. Over and over they cry out to God, asking for help. Asking for safety.
And just like in Egypt, God hears them. And God acts.
God establishes a pattern here, and it’s an important one for us to pay attention to. Because, First, it gives us some really important permission. The permission to say: what I’m going through isn’t good. What I’m going through isn’t fair. Whatever I’m walking through right now, it isn’t what I want.
When we look at the way the people cry out to God, over and over in this season, there’s no expectation that they try and make lemonade out of lemons or that they found the silver lining. This is honest naming of what the struggle is. And if you feel sometimes, 4
especially as a person of faith, that you’re not allowed to do that, I hope you can draw some inspiration from this story. That you can know that your job isn’t to make everything be ok and look good on the outside, but that our job as people of faith is to lean into the mystery of how God works and to be open to the one who loves us and sees us and knows us so well and who responds when we cry out.
See, the people of ancient Israel, they weren’t exceptionally enlightened on how the whole God thing worked. They didn’t know the mechanics of how prayers were heard or answered, they actually a lot of the time aren’t even that appreciative of the things God does for them in that season. But the amazing thing about God is that God’s hearing and responding is never contingent on any of that. It doesn’t depend on their gratitude. It doesn't depend on their understanding. It doesn’t depend on them seeing the big picture and all of what God wants to do.
It’s just who God is. 5
This story teaches us so much about the heart of God and how God loves people and that’s something we can hold on to when we’re in a moment of challenge.
Maybe you’re in the wilderness right now...if not, you will be at some point...but maybe you just need to remember that God is aware. And God DOES respond, even when that response comes in forms that are a little bit unexpected. Because sometimes, (SLIDE) God’s intervention and presence can be simple and surprising.
The Israelites, when they go to their leader Moses, complaining about their situation and their hunger, they don’t expect God to do what God ends up doing. They WANT to go back to their so-called “feasting” that they used to do in Egypt. They want to go back to something familiar and comfortable. They do not want weird heaven bread and quails as their source of protein. That was not on the menu!
It’s not on the menu, it’s not what they expect. But it’s what they get.
And you know what? It’s enough. It’s enough to get them through. It’s enough of God to move them 6
beyond a place of struggle and certain death, to a place where they are going to make it. It’s enough to take them beyond the present moment. It’s a glimpse of what God can do and sometimes a glimpse of God is enough to get us through the struggle.
There’s a great example of the power of a glimpse in the new movie “Young Woman and the Sea.” It tells the true story of (SLIDE) Trudy Ederle, who was the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. You can imagine that she had ALL KINDS of struggles trying to get to this point in her life. She beat measles as a young child, entered into the world of swimming when women were not encouraged to be athletes, and pushed through discrimination and sabotage to meet her goal of swimming the Channel.
And the biggest obstacle of all came during the end of her swim. This IS a spoiler for the movie...also this is a historical event, but I’m just warning you! As she swam, she had a guide boat going with her, to provide food, encouragement, and most importantly, direction. But toward the end of her swim, with just several miles to go, the water became too shallow and 7
the boat had to leave her to take an alternate route to shore. She was on her own, and it became dark and she became disoriented and at one point thinks this is it. This is the end. There’s no way this story can have a happy ending.
But then, she sees it. Light, on the cliffs in front of her. Her family and the spectators on the shore have lit huge bonfires so that she can see where she’s going in the dark. It’s just a glimpse, but it’s enough. She’s able to keep moving forward, she’s able to see what’s possible, she’s able to have hope again.
That’s what a glimpse can do.
And stories like Trudy Ederle’s remind us that (SLIDE) even a small encounter with God can sustain us through difficult times. That doesn’t mean the whole challenge is resolved. It doesn’t mean that everything resolves the way we hope. But it does mean that we can be sustained, we can make it through, even a challenge that we can’t necessarily see the outcome in. 8
If we go back to the story of the Ancient Israelites in the wilderness, this is absolutely the case for them. They didn’t see their whole problem solved when God responded to them—they were still in the wilderness. They weren’t in a comfortable place. They didn’t have a feast of their favorite foods. AND. They weren’t dead. They had exactly enough of what they needed to survive. The struggle that they were going through might not have been resolved in full, but that doesn’t mean God wasn’t being faithful.
The challenges we go through, we might not—in fact, we likely WON’T--see them solved in full. And God is still faithful. In the small moments, in the glimpses of God’s goodness and glory, we see what it’s like to experience God’s faithful love.
And the blessing we get to receive and give is that we experience God’s love and then we get to give it to someone else. I don’t necessarily love that struggle and challenge is a universal part of our human experience, but I do find so much hope when I see people use their struggles and their grief and their pain to create this deep empathy and compassion for others. That’s probably the best way we can let ourselves be transformed by our pain. Because we 9
COULD become bitter. We COULD become angry and closed off.
OR we could lean into community. We could lean into the messy realities of life and let people into our stories. We can hold on to who God is and how God wants us to love and then keep moving forward like that.
And I just really believe that when we do that, God uses it. That effort is not wasted. If we keep leaning in, if we keep moving forward, God is going to meet us there.
And it’s hard to keep moving forward. We just want to go back to the good old days. Have you felt that pull before? We get so tempted to romanticize the past, to want to hold on to what used to be. And we think, “if things could just be like they were before, THEN it would all be better.” If I could just go back to before the loss, or before the world changed, before whatever that thing was...then I’d be ok.
But when we're tempted to say, “God take me back to...” we might find ourselves missing what God is doing in this very moment. We might miss where God wants to take us in the future. It’s exactly the struggle 10
that the Israelites had in their time in the wilderness. They kept longing for something in the past like that would solve their problems. They could conveniently forget that the whole reason they were in the wilderness in the first place was because the past was pretty problematic itself!
They’d long for what had been. But even in that longing, God invites them to draw near. God speaks through their leaders and says, “come close. Look for me. Find my presence, find my glory, realize that I am right here, right now, and even though it’s not exactly what you want...you’re not alone. Keep moving forward where I’m trying to take you.”
There’s this moment in verse 10 where they seem to get it. Their perspective starts to change. Verse 10 says: (SLIDE) “they looked toward the wilderness and then they saw God’s glory.” They took an honest look at where they were. They stopped trying to cling to the past and they started, so slightly, to trust where God was taking them in the future. They began to realize that the wilderness wasn’t an inconvenient detour in their collective story, it was an essential 11
chapter TO the story. They were being shaped in that moment, in their faith, in their capacity to care for each other. God had not abandoned them in the wilderness, God was meeting them there in a way that I’m not sure God could have met them otherwise.
Sometimes God meets us in our challenges in a powerful and unique way. It doesn’t mean those challenges are inherently good. It doesn’t mean we seek them out or try and give cliche reasons for why they happened. We don’t have to do that.
But what we can do, is let ourselves be looking for glimpses of God at work. Because when we need to leave the wilderness in order to find God’s presence and glory, we’re going to find that we grow pretty impatient. The Israelites were in that wilderness for 40 years. It was not a quick trip. And when we need God’s presence and glory to change our wilderness, we can become discouraged. We can miss what God is doing because it isn’t like we imagine or hope.
But when we can find God’s presence and glory in the wilderness, we start to grow in faith and trust. When we let ourselves embrace the mystery of how God 12
works in the middle of our biggest challenges, we find a God who is faithful. We find hope that keeps us going. And we might just find exactly what we need, just through a glimpse.
Let’s pray.