Father Richard Rohr describes how the Exodus story models a growing trust in God through times of unknowing:
The journey of Exodus, the journey that ancient Israel walked, is an image of the journey made by every person who sets out to seek the Divine Presence. In the Bible, Israel is humanity personified, and so what happens to Israel is what happens to everyone who sets out on a journey of faith. Christianity must recognize itself as an inclusive religion from the very beginning and honor its roots in Judaism.
In the book of Exodus, Egypt is the place of slavery, and the Promised Land is the place of freedom. The journey from Egypt to the Promised Land—through the Red Sea to Sinai and across the desert—is a saga which symbolizes our own struggle towards ever greater inner freedom, empowered by grace. The story of Israel symbolically describes the experience of our own liberation by God—and toward a universal love.
Until we look at Exodus as a symbolic story of spiritual truth, much of it seems distant and unreal. The events are either downright incredible, or we have to believe that things were different then: God worked wonders for the Israelites but doesn’t work that way anymore.
The fact is, however, that God has not changed; it’s people who have changed. The Israelites saw Yahweh acting in their lives. Their insight was really a product of hindsight: They reflected on their experience and interpreted it in a new way. We have that same opportunity. When hindsight becomes foresight—when it becomes a hope and expectation that God still cares and still acts on our behalf—we call that the vision of faith.
The stories of Exodus make inner sense to us only as we ourselves walk a journey of faith. If we listen to the Spirit, we can rather easily relate these stories to our own life.
We have to turn to God and allow ourselves to be led on this faith journey. We have to be willing to experience the Exodus in our own lives and enter into our own desert wanderings. We have to let God liberate us from captivity to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan, not fully knowing how to cross the desert between the two.
The prophet Moses takes the risk of faith. All that God gives him is a promise, and yet he acts on that promise. People of faith expect the promises of their deepest soul to be fulfilled; for them, life becomes a time between promise and fulfillment. It’s never a straight line, but always three steps forward and two backward—and the backward creates much of the knowledge and impetus for the forward.
Can we trust, like the Israelites, that the way to the Promised Land is through the desert? When we least expect it, there is an oasis. As the Scriptures promise, God will make the desert bloom (Isaiah 35:1).
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos, The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1988), 16, 17, 19, 32.
Image credit and inspiration: Clay Banks, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, USA, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Walking into the wild becomes a mirror of the Exodus itself—risking the unknown so that, in the wandering, we discover the quiet, faithful presence that leads us toward freedom and deeper communion with God.
Story from Our Community:
This poem was inspired by the Daily Meditation, “The ‘Backside’ of God.” Was Moses aggrieved to be shoved into a cleft / and made to wait until you had passed by? / I too see your glory in splinters— / the meadowlark’s early song out of yellow feathers, / the ferocity of wind circling this valley, / alpenglow transforming the dusky mountains…. / I long … to preserve / the essence of love honed in heartbreak, / of songs salted with tears, / of companionship with a single other / tenderized by time together; / how to hold the wonder and terror / of unknowing—to be in this life / whose end I cannot see, to be willing / to lose it, only to find it / in the wake of something bigger, / silently beckoning me to follow.
—Sharon C.
