by Pastor Douglas Brauner

The Struggle to Press on.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“…and the people of Israel said to [Moses and Aaron], ‘Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’”
Exodus 16:3 English Standard Version

How many shoes did the Israelites leave behind in Egypt when the Lord freed them from slavery and formed them into a nation during their wilderness wandering? Evidently, a young person is minus a shoe after a trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I wonder if the child misses that shoe like the Israelites missed the meat pots of Egypt.

Nostalgia is not reality. When times are tough, it is easy to think that the olden days were better than today. We often think of the past as simpler, more peaceful than the present. The days of my childhood were not peaceful, nor were they simple. Our nation was sending people to war in Vietnam and riots filled our college campuses. A president and a Civil Rights leader where assassinated.

We might think that the Israelites were crazy for longing to return to Egypt, but hunger changed their view of the past. They longed for the meat pots of Egypt even if that meant slavery. Do we find ourselves living with the same attitude, longing for a fantasy of the past? Yes, times might be difficult right now, but longing for the shoe we left in the desert will not solve today’s problems.

Paul has a better idea.

“…one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14 (ESV)

It’s time to press on to the amazing future that God has for us in Christ and let the shoe rest in peace.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado