Exodus: The Lord and His PilgrimsSample

Reliability, providence and availability

Faith is not a leap in the dark; it is a leap in the light into the light! It is conviction based on evidence. By the time they reach Exodus 16 the Lord has given his people ample ground for trusting him, and gives us, too, ample ground for facing life with a basic and immoveable spirit of trust. A spirit of trust, each morning, looks out into the unknown day and says, ‘Come what may, I trust you’. A faith meets adversity with, ‘Nevertheless, I trust you.’ 

In today’s reading we experience one example in forty years of God’s steady reliability in supplying Israel’s daily needs (16:16, 35). Every day for forty years the reliable God delivers the day’s quota of manna. Never once does Israel have to call heaven to say, ‘It hasn’t come today.’ To trust such a God for our needs is not a leap in the dark, is it? Isn’t the evidence for such trust there? 

God is reliable. He is also provident – the very word itself means ‘forward-looking’. Had he not prepared beforehand a tenderhearted princess to provide a home for Moses (2:5–10)? Had he not grown a tree at Marah in anticipation of Israel’s far-future need (15:25)? Had he not built into the fabric of creation itself a water supply in readiness for his pilgrim people (17:6)? Can we not, then, step in confident faith into the unknown future? Wherever our foot touches the ground, we can say, ‘The Lord has been here in anticipation of my needs. He has his plans long since laid.’ 

The message of the final section of our reading (17:8–16) is that, when need arises, the Lord is there to hear and answer prayer. What else can the uplifted hands of Moses signify but a cry heavenwards which brings the Almighty God victoriously into our crises? We too can say, ‘The Lord Is My Banner’ (v. 15, ESV) – he has come into the thick of the battle to rally his troops, and to give heart and direction to his campaign. The translation of verse 16 is insecure but the most like rendering is: ‘For he said, “There is a hand upon the throne of the Lord.”’ Just imagine it: we lift up our hands and touch his throne!

Reflection

Ponder the words of this hymn: 

Prayer ‘moves the hand which moves the world, to bring salvation down’.

(James Wallace, ‘There is an eye that never sleeps’)