(Psalm) Exodus 15: 8-10, 12, 17 Song of Victory   “…You blew with your breath, the sea closed over them; they sank like lead in the terrible waters....”

Matthew 12: 46-50 The true kinsfolk of Jesus   “…And stretching out his hand towards his disciples he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers.  Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’
 

Come Holy Spirit…
For the past couple of weeks I have been thinking a lot about my own doubts about whether things happened in our history the way the bible has recorded our beginnings.  In concentrating on the area of faith, I wondered how many times in the history of humankind have people moved away from believing that God exists?  In the bible alone, there are many recordings of that phenomenon and each time, God chaos proceeds a huge reawakening.  We have friends and family members, who don’t believe in God, and recently in my life that subject has surfaced as people I know or am related to have been asking that question.  The recording of the time in history, when God wasn’t real, shows us a world in total chaos.

I started realizing that even though I didn’t know these people whose history with their God was recorded in the Word, I had no reason to believe their stories were not true.  If true for them, then they were true for me.  In reality, I realized we have the benefit of hindsight in understanding this complex relationship of God and His people.  The choices we make could thus be based on a sound belief in God’s existence and therefore believing the rest of the story as we find it printed in the Word.  Instead of repeating the cycle, of falling away, only to return as our ancestors have done many times, I wondered how many times God would take us back.  Which led me to, why repeat that part of our history?

Today’s readings have the very familiar scene of Moses raising his staff in the air at Yahweh’s request to part the waters of the sea.  Safe passage is gained for the Israelites to escape the pursuit of Pharaoh who has previously held them as slaves.   Yahweh says (Exodus 14:17-18) “I shall win glory for myself at the expense of Pharaoh and all his army…the Egyptians will know that I am Yahweh”.   Later on in this same reading,  (Exodus 14:31) we see it is the people of Israel whose faith in their God’s existence is renewed.   Pharaoh’s army is destroyed.

In Matthew (12:50), Jesus tells us whoever does the will of the Father in heaven is his brother, sister or mother.  We can all have the same level of relationship to Jesus, if we do the will of the Father.  Let us pray to God to increase our faith, to know Him so as to do His will.  Trust that everything we think we experience today has already been learned, the hard way, in an earlier day.  Let us trust the Word, through the power of the Spirit to speak to you and to me.  Convict us Lord, so we won’t keep reliving the same lives as our ancestors did in establishing our relationship with you, our God.