Find Hope: Matthew 1-4Sample

This Feels Like a Backwards Step

Have you ever found yourself in a situation or context that you felt wasn't getting you where you needed to go? Maybe a job that was supposed to be short-term but has become a permanent fixture? Or a health struggle? Or a negative social network?

We (and our culture) have a strong tendency towards immediacy. The shortest path is the only path, regardless of whether or not it is good for us. The result can be frustration when we discover again and again that God's ways are not our ways.

But what if where we are is exactly where God wants us to be? Maybe not forever, but at least for right now. What if this context, with all its imperfections and frustrations, and maybe even pain, was an essential part of the journey God has marked out for us?

Egypt is not a place that God's people remember fondly. It is a place of slavery and oppression, a place to be rescued from. But that is exactly where God tells Joseph to take his young family.

God knows the fullness of our story and every story, even when all we can see is right now. Jesus' life is both a model for us in what it looks like to be led by God on a path better than the one we would have chosen for ourselves and the basis on which we can trust him to be in control even when we can't see how.

Today, ponder this: What part of your life feels like Egypt? What might God be doing right now that you haven't been able to see because you're too worried about getting out of Egypt?