Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 8:20-21

20 And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh; lo, he cometh forth to the water; and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

21 Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are.

In the midst of all the larger wonders occurring it is all too easy to miss the little ones that are happening as well. At several points now, God has told Moses the exact time and place he needed to be to meet Pharaoh. I wonder if it ever occurred to Pharaoh what the implications were of Moses and Aaron intercepting him along his way. It meant that God knew Pharaoh and his movements intimately, He might have even revealed some of them to Moses before Pharaoh, himself, knew when and where he would go. If Pharaoh felt anything at Moses’s prescience, he should have felt vulnerable.

In regards to the plague of flies, this curse mixes some of the intimacy of the lice with some of the space-invasion of the frogs. Flies could be on the body like lice, and in the dishes like frogs. They could carrying diseases and dirtying vessels. Perhaps the most unique quality of the flies, though, would be the incessant buzzing. Their constant murmuring in the ears is another representation for when a society embraces false doctrines instead of following God. Moral perversion causes so much distraction and noise, from the literal buzz of gossip to the constant murmur of a dissatisfied conscience.

Itching, noisy, constant irritation. Whether in the form of flies or anxious guilt, this is one agitation that none of us need in our lives!

Posted on by Abe Austin

Making Time for God- Question

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and we have a lot of wheels squeaking in our lives! The smartphone chirps at us, social media rants at us, the television blares at us. Life is a dashboard full of meters constantly draining towards empty, and we rush about frantically trying to fill them all.

We’re afraid of losing things, of missing out, of leaving opportunities on the table. Our lives become machine-like, incessantly servicing all the many calls for our attention.

God, meanwhile, doesn’t squeak at us at all. He’s much too dignified to stoop to that level. This shows what great respect He has for us, but also makes it easy to lose sight of Him amidst the din of the world. Still He waits, patiently, for however long it takes. He waits for us to come to Him. Usually when we do, we’re the ones squeaking now. Squeaking in pain!

Well, God has grease for His in-pain, squeaky-wheel-children. He commiserates with us, then soothes us, and finally heals us. Then we, eternally grateful, skip away happily and promptly lose sight of Him once more. We’re caught back up in the world, we’ll come back when we’ve scraped our knees again.

It’s a way to live life, and I suppose it could be worse…but also it could be better. God invites us to make Him a more permanent fixture in our lives, to give Him time each and every day to heal and strengthen us. He offers to be with us every hour.

With this study we’ll consider how to push some of the world’s clutter off of our shelves and make space for God. We’ll examine what tricks the adversary uses to distract us from the things that really matter. Before we get started, though, I’d love to hear in what ways you’ve found yourself overwhelmed by the noise of the world, and how you were able to make a time and place for holiness.