Week 22: Day 1
Welcome to a new week of Orbit, and a new book of the Bible! Today, Liz kicks off Exodus 1.
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labour in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labour, the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
Intro: Hello and welcome to Orbit, a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life from the team behind Satellites - I'm Liz Grier. Every day this week I’m going to share a little bit of the Bible with you, give you a chance to pray and think about it, and provide you with one practical way to put it into practice today.
This week our readings come from the first two chapters of the Book of Exodus. But Exodus is the second book in the series and before we dive in you need to know the story so far. So, God had promised a guy called Abraham that he would make him and his family into a great nation, and then through his family God would bless the whole world. Which sounds easy. But if you read the story, it hasn't been that easy all. Let alone a great nation, Abraham struggled to even have one child. But at the beginning of Exodus, 70 members of Abraham’s family have moved to Egypt. Fast forward a couple of 100 years and that family has become a nation. The Israelites. Things are looking pretty bad for them. The Pharaoh, the ruler of the land hates them and has made them his slaves, and the whole book of Exodus is about how God rescues the Israelite nation out of Egypt.
Bible: Let’s pick up the story in Exodus 1:11-14.
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labour in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labour, the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
Thoughts: Pharoah was terrified that the Israelites would take over his country, but the more he tried to oppress them the more the very thing he wanted to squash kept happening. Israel got bigger and so did Pharoah’s fear. It seems that there is nothing Pharoah can do to get in the way of God’s promise to Abraham. Yay! But. The Israelite people were slaves. Their masters were brutal. They crushed them and humiliated them. Their work was hot, harsh, exhausting and dangerous. Their lives were almost unbearable. And you might have noticed that in these verses, God doesn’t get a mention. When life is good, when everything is going well it can be easy to believe that God is with us. But it’s much harder when life is tough. We can be tempted to think that God is absent. But that's not what the Bible says. God promises to always be with us, even in the worst of situations. Sometimes we know it and can sense him and sometimes we can’t. But it's a fact. I know in my own life I can’t always trust my feelings which might tell me that God doesn’t care, or has forgotten me. I have to choose to believe God when he tells me ‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned’. When life is tough it’s not weak to ask God where he is, to long for him to be with us in our situations. It doesn’t mean we are not strong enough in our faith. Or good enough as Christians. The bible is full of stories of people who doubt God, and cry out to him in distress. For example time and again the psalmist cries out to God when he is in a bad place longing for him to be present.
Prayer: Father I thank you that you promise that you are always with me, that you never forget me or abandon me. Help me to trust that you are there even when I can’t feel it or see it. Lord thank you that you always hear my prayers, even when I’m doubting. Amen
Silence: There's now just a few moments of silence for you to pray, reflect on these ideas, or simply sit and be still.
Action: Every day on Orbit we give you a simple practical challenge to help you put the passage into action in your life. So today I want you to:
Take a piece of paper and draw the middle. On the left. Make a list of times when you felt close to God. Perhaps it was when you became a Christian. Or you got baptised. A festival. On the right. Write down moments in your life when you really didn't know where God was. Perhaps you were ill. Or struggling at school, or with friendships, or self-image. When you’ve done that pray through the list. Thank God for when he was close but being honest about times when he felt far away. Perhaps one of those times is still current. Take it to God and be honest about how you feel. Let him show you how he wants to be present with you, how he never wants you to feel alone.
Outro: And that's it! Thanks so much for joining me and I’ll be back with another reflection tomorrow.