Exodus 4

Ummm...I don't like Chapter 4!  LOL. 

Ok, so here God walks Moses through some of the miracles.  Moses freaks out thinking about having to be God's mouth piece.  This angers God, but he is prepared for it and has already sent Aaron on his way to meet Moses.  Personally I get convicted over this because I hate speaking and shy away from it.  Sometimes I worry that I am limiting God's influence through me because of it.  I wonder how the story might be different if Moses would have stepped up and done it on his own.  Aaron and Miriam did cause trouble for the Israelite's down the line.  Maybe this undermined Moses' authority and the road would have been less rocky along the way?  Maybe this watered the seed that led to the sin that ultimately cost him seeing the Promised Land with his own eyes.  We will never know, but I'm sure that there was a price to pay.

So, what I really don't like about this chapter is that one night, while Moses is taking his family back to Egypt, the Lord confronts Moses and is going to kill him!  YES!  Kill him!!!  What?  His life is spared because Moses' wife circumcises their son and touched his feet with the foreskin.  I looked it up in Bible commentaries and it seems that it was a sin for Moses to have not circumcised his son.  The explanation is that God needed to find and confront the sin in Moses' life before he would be allowed to do what God had called him to do.  Sigh.  I think this is an area where I get in trouble.  I mean if God were a human and we were talking about the situation I would totally call him a drama queen and tell him off for grossly over reacting. 

I think we all need to be taken by the shoulders and shaken until we remember the importance of the bigger picture and the price of God's plans not being fulfilled.  Sin is sin and separates us from God.  We cannot fulfill anything God sized without following God's perfect will to the letter.  Remember, Moses was groomed for this whether he knew it or not.  There was no back up plan.  How many of us are walking away from what we have been groomed for because we didn't want to do something uncomfortable or something that we deemed silly or inconsequential?  I'm guessing most of us.  And because it's the norm, no one even thinks about it.  This is sad and scary.  I feel like we are all like the slaves in Egypt, but instead of it being the Egyptians enslaving us it's comfort.  Most people know that there is more to life and that they were called to something greater.  We have hopes and dreams, but it's uncomfortable taking a risk.  It's uncomfortable being different.  It's uncomfortable when someone makes fun of us for not doing such and such or when we have to sacrifice something we love.  It's exhausting to swim upstream.  It hurts to fight against the norm.  It's easier to just accept our routine and hope something will change or that the tide will work in our favor at some point. It doesn't work like that, and someone is going to have to go to the burning bush, work through their issues and follow God into the fight.