illuminated by another
If you were born a slave and raised a slave, what life would you know other than slavery?
Would you understand life outside of the rhythms, rules, and suppressed freedom of slavery?
How could you?
If every day of life was slavery, from sun up to sun down, and if every person you knew only knew the same life—more than just your body and time would be enslaved.
Your imagination would be enslaved.
Your thoughts would only know how to entertain the hope of a slave. Just getting by, one more day, both loathing and depending upon your master.
This is the predicament of the people of Israel in the early chapters of the book of Exodus.
Life had gotten hard, they were completely broken and cried out to God.
He rescued them.
Now what?
They still only understood life in one way: as slaves.
What happens next is an extraordinary, complex, and difficult journey spanning hundreds of years.
God doesn’t wave a magic wand or twitch an I-dream-of-Genie nose and make the people amazingly obedient, faithful, and righteous.
He purposefully and painfully enters into the long, long, long process of reshaping the imagination of this large, abandoned group of people.
No longer shall their future be illuminated by the dim hope of a slave.
Their path will now be illuminated by Another.
They will be pushed and prodded to imagine a different future, a different way of life, and then to mold their very existence around moving towards that future.
God’s future for humanity is now their future.
Their daily existence is projecting them towards God’s future for humanity.
They way the work together, as a community-nation, is to reflect their newly illumined path.
They are now marred by the glorious infection of redemption.
It is changing everything.
I'm a runner, writer, thinker, and pastor. I love to agitate people's consciences. I like to spend my time reading, running, and relaxing with family & friends.