The Great Exodus

My spirit sighs. 

Some days are mixed with just the right amounts of grace, grease and Glory.  Today was a day just like that.  It started with a heavy dose of grace as I stood with my faith family and declared the goodness of God.  By noon, I realized that my day had taken a turn for the 'hard,' and that it would require a decent amount of elbow grease to sign off on my many promises.  But by nightfall, or should I say 'snowfall,' the precious Glory of God was undeniable as He painted a picture a white-as-snow picture for whomever would pay attention.  And, so my spirit sighs...

I'm supposed to write your cup-of-Monday-morning-get-you-going-blog, but my heart is flying in so many directions that I'm not sure my skin can hold me together.  I'm saturated with all things God.  My heart is as raw as a bottom lip in a blizzard, but in a beautiful way.  I'm at that perfectly coming apart place where you know you're going to 'lose it,' but the loss is a celebration in and of itself.   Every word on every page of every book seems as though it was written for me.  Every song sings a story I've entertained in my prayers.  Every sermon makes me want to stand and applaud.  And every call to action whispers my name.  Some folks call it religion.  Others call it rededication.  Some may even call it revival, but my heart has a different name for it.

I'm near the God Margin.

I'm somewhere close to that imaginary line that exists between something good that requires all of my time, talent and resources and something GREAT that can only be accomplished if God does the impossible in my life.  I'm near learning the deep lesson that no matter how many of my own accolades I write on that piece of paper, still a margin surrounds my words that only God can fill.  I'm at the point where I'm almost ready to whisper my purpose aloud, no matter how impossible it sounds, believing that God can accomplish the desires of my heart.

And so, our Monday morning pep rally turns out looking a lot more like a confession. God's Word, along with a thousand prayers and a willing heart, is turning me inside out. If Genesis was a beautiful, intentional beginning, then Exodus was a picture of the impossibility of life without Christ.  Every fiber of tightly woven fabric, every ounce of the twenty-two hundred pounds of pure gold, every detail carved into every precious stone, and every shaving of acacia wood used to prepare a place to offer sacrifices to God proves the truth even the saved are terrified to admit;  we're nothing without Jesus.  I mean, let's face it- if we had to follow that many directions, spend that much time, or share that  many resources before we could ask someone else to ask God to forgive us, we'd be hopelessly, eternally lost.  Even if we knew the way, we've steeped in our 'gimme-gimme' culture too long to spend years practicing a very expensive obedience for any amount of forgiveness.  We're too proud.  We're too smart.  We're too right.  In all honesty, we're so deeply desperate that we spend our entire lives trying to pretend we've forgotten what desperation feels like.  Yes, friends,  I'm pretty confident in saying that we wouldn't have embraced the Exodus.  Nope.  If God was going to write words of redemption across our hearts, He was going to have to do it another way.

Jesus.  The once and for all Sacrifice.  The Atonement.  The Ransom.  The Friend of sinners. 

He was enough.  He fulfilled the requirements that He knew we never would.  He's the perfection His Father was seeking and after thousands of years, He's what His Father sees when He seeks us out.  From our point of view, the book of Exodus looks more like this:

Bring to the Lord an offering of gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair; ram skins dyed red and hides of sea cows; acacia wood; olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece.    Find Jesus.  Make an altar of acacia wood for burning incense. It is to be square, a cubit long and a cubit wide, and two cubits high—its horns of one piece with it. Overlay the top and all the sides and the horns with pure gold, and make a gold molding around it. Make two gold rings for the altar below the molding—two on opposite sides—to hold the poles used to carry it. Make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Put the altar in front of the curtain that is before the ark of the Testimony—before the atonement cover that is over the Testimony—where I will meet with you.   Believe Jesus.  Make a bronze basin, with its bronze stand, for washing. Place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and put water in it. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it. Whenever they enter the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Also, when they approach the altar to minister by presenting an offering made to the Lord by fire, they shall wash their hands and feet so that they will not die.  Love Jesus.

I'm a little worked up about it all, if you want to know the truth.  The sweetest Name I know is even sweeter today.  The Lion of the Tribe of Judah is a little more wild than He was before I camped out in the Great Exodus.  And, alas, the inevitable has happened- my mind is a little more His tonight, and my heart is a little less mine.