Painting Pictures of Egypt

I have been immersed in the book of Exodus this summer in preparation for the lectures I will be doing for our Community Women's Bible study. As I read, learn, and reflect I am constantly astounded that the Living Word truly is alive. To take the attitude of, "That was then and this is now," when it comes to the Old Testament is to lose the knowledge of our spiritual heritage and to miss the insight into the lives of the people of that time. If we truly understand their lives, we will have a better understanding of our own.

The "desert kvetching" is something that has always annoyed me. With my former, superficial understanding of what was going on during those days, I could not fathom why these people, who had been in slavery for heavens sake, were griping and moaning about being free from Egyptian tyranny. I decided to take the journey with them, mentally slipping into their sandals, and attempting to experience what they saw and felt.

Imagine it. Your husband has a backbreaking job with very little compensation, you live in a tiny house, and you live in the middle of an extraordinary culture and unbelievable wealth-none of it yours. Some days, when your husband comes home, he is so exhausted from the heat and the hard labor you are fearful that he may not live through another day. He can't quit his job for a better one because he is a slave. Things are bad and you yearn for freedom.

Then a man comes who refuses to let Pharaoh keep your husband and your people in servitude any longer. You know it is just a matter of time. Sure enough, after terrible things have happened to the Egyptian people, your husband gathers your little family around the table and tells you that you will be leaving the next day.

You pack all your belongings and you set out with the Egyptian army hot on your trail. You despair and then the sea parts and you are free on the other side of the water. You become hungry and miraculously so many quail appear they can be caught by hand. A filling substance appears each morning to replace the bread you no longer can bake. In the midst of these amazing things, your every day life goes on. There are children to feed and to raise. There are clothes to wash and a home to be kept, even though your home is a tent. You are sick to death of the taste of quail and manna, your children cry for a piece of fruit and deep inside you yearn for the same thing. Your husband is happy, now a free man, striking out in search of his destiny. He has never had such a wonderful adventure.

Instead of the fertile delta of the Nile, you now live under the unrelenting sun in the hot sand of the desert. You begin to remember Egypt, the most beautiful and cultured city in the world. The banks of the cooling water of the Nile were covered with palms. Fruits and vegetables of all sorts were available. The streets were clean and the linen garments you wore were never dulled and dirty from the constant blowing of the sand against your body. It may not have been such a good life but it was a life where you had a little bit of control and a few amenities. It was a place that you understood and could navigate. This place, this desert is wild and unforgiving. There is no relief, no goal in sight.

Sometimes the bad we know seems better than the good we have not yet experienced. Haven't we all, at some time, looked back and decided that the bad situation we were in was better than the future we could not see?

How long did you stay in that terrible job because you were afraid of the future? How many women stay in abusive marriages because the fear of being on their own is greater than the fear they know and deal with on a daily basis? How many women have not said an enthusiastic "yes" to that marriage proposal because the concept of a life shared was hard to visualize and the reality of a lonely life was something tangible, something familiar?

The singer, Sarah Groves, has a wonderful song called Painting Pictures of Egypt. The refrain says:

I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacks
The future feels so hard
And I want to go back.

Don't we all paint pictures of Egypt? Can't we all look back on our lives and think of a time when the future felt hard and we just wanted to go back to the familiar, even if the familiar was not such a great place?

I now understand the complaining of the Hebrews in the wilderness. I have been there, in my own desert, griping and cranky when God was trying to lead me into a wonderful place. You can see the tracks of my feet in the sand, the place where I dug in and refused to walk any farther. How thankful I am that I have a God who has never-ending patience and who will sometimes drag me where I refuse to walk.

Are you walking through the desert, confident that God is leading you to your own promised land or have you dug your toes in the sand, refusing to move forward and insisting on painting pictures of Egypt?