My inaugural Lent-to-Pentecost Bible reading plan got me back to the first Passover in Exodus this morning, again. What a verse for this year.
When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.
Exodus 13:17-18
Pause and quiet yourself. Here we get a peek into Father God’s thought process for all those times we are frustrated by the long way around. Maybe even times we are tempted to believe He is arbitrary or distant or against us. What are you waiting on that feels slow in coming? What are you believing about who Father God is to you in that situation?
In February 2018, I was in my third year trying everything I could to recover from a foot injury. Having exhausted the short-cuts (a topic for another post), I’d finally submitted to six weeks in a boot and spent the spring of 2018 relearning how to walk. I had a life-changing conversation with Father God that season that went something like this:
“God, why don’t you just heal me instantly?” Kelsey, what would you do if I healed you today? “I would immediately go for a run.” Yes, you would, and Kelsey, what’s the goal? “I want to run Boston Marathon.” In that moment, I knew what He was getting at. I needed to be fast to qualify, and in order to be fast enough, I needed to do the slow, secret work of fixing imbalances in my body so that I was sound enough to train. Work I hadn’t been willing to do. It changed everything for me to realize Father God and I weren’t butting heads—He wasn’t opposed to my goal and desire; in fact, He was apparently—wondrously—personally invested in helping me out of my own way. Sometimes, fast is slow and short is long.
During another Passover many centuries later, Jesus went to Bethesda pool near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem.
Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
John 5:3, 5-6
Have you felt stuck this thirty-eight-years-long year? If I’ve learned anything from quarantine, it is how capable God is to move anything forward He chooses—judging by the rate of new marriages and babies and relocations and jobs, which seems only to have accelerated. That situation or longing you that came to mind earlier? Consider the Bethesda paralytic, how quickly Jesus changed everything in his life after a very, very long time of waiting. Consider Father God’s goodness, kindness, and good intentions toward you, and hold it again—whether fast or slow—with fresh hope.
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
John 5:8
Fire and Whisper 