About Living Together & Living Forward.

Exodus 20, 21, 22, 23 & 24

These chapters talk a lot about how the people should live and move forward together.  Laws, rules, regulations… 

There has to be some trauma involved with living under oppression and living with scarcity.  Bondage. Slavery. And yet it is so important for the Israelites to remember where they came from and to tell their children their story.   All the hard bits too.  

Instead of focusing on the scars of their experiences, God institutes festivals to commemorate AND celebrate their great deliverance.  And to celebrate the milk and honey of God’s abundance, His plenty and His providence.  The coming ingathering and harvests. 

I love that way of looking at the things we come through.

Reminded by our scars that God sustained us,

instead of getting stuck on that thing that happened.

That He showed up in the middle of it.

That He provided and delivered.

One neat little passage that is also tucked in this narrative is God’s Promise to send an angel to prepare the way back to the promised land.  (Ch 23:20 to 31)

Sometimes I read these details again for the first time.  The Promised Land is the place Jacob and his family left to join Joseph in Egypt.  It makes me think that the Promised Land did not always flow with milk and honey, but that it is the place where God lives with His Beloved People. 

And it makes me wonder if this is the very same angel Joshua meets on his way to Jericho (Joshua 5:13,14)

Sometimes the place we leave is not the same place we return to.

And God always goes before us. 

Through the plenty places and the hard bits.

We are His Beloved