Good morning and Happy Friday!
After eight weeks we are coming to the end of the Exodus story. In Deuteronomy 34 we are skipping ahead through forty years in the wilderness to that moment when God takes Moses up Mount Nebo to catch his first glimpse of the Promised Land! This is the land that God had promised Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and all their descendants. God shows it to Moses, then Moses dies and a new leader Joshua takes his place, ready to begin the journey into the Promised Land. That’s our story this week in a nutshell.
I have been thinking this week about how true and how often this story happens. Moses has lived the past forty years, orienting his people to the promises of God, encouraging them and guiding them and then at the end he dies before the promise comes true. It was like that for Abraham as well. Abraham spent his whole life struggling to be faithful to the promises of God, promises whose fulfillment he only caught glimpses of in his own life but that he passed on to his children and his children’s children right down through the years until they came to us.
And I think if it was like that for Moses and Abraham, then it is like that for us as well…In our own time and our own place, we live into the promises of God and though we never see their total fulfillment we catch glimpses of them and we pass on the hope of them to those who come afterwards, a source of living water that will never run dry.
It is like tending a garden, a friend of mine once said. You often inherit your garden from those who tended it before you, and in the end you will pass it on to the ones who come later. In different times and under different care the garden might look very different but the shared vision of beauty and fruitfulness; life lived to the glory of God, remains constant.
I wonder who it is that passed on the beauty of God’s promises to you, inspiring you to live into them. And who you in your turn will pass them onto?
See you Sunday.
Just a quick note that the Spiritual Types workshop planned for this Sunday has been postponed. If you are interested in finding out more please talk to Tristan.
Grace and Peace
Karen