The casual observer might have thought I was driving through a desert in southwest United States.
They wouldn’t have been wrong.
There were breathtaking mountain views, sculpted cliff-sides, high, jagged peaks—paved highways winding their way through the connecting valleys. All around me were signs of desert life: cacti, scrub, and juniper—dry ground and dry air.
But—it was also a seabed.
Turn back the clock 265 million years and where I was driving was far beneath the waves. I was driving on dry land and, simultaneously, the bed of the Permian Sea. It can be a bit disorienting to juggle those two thoughts.
This week’s scriptures are all about such things: perceptions and perspectives. I wonder if this kind of confusion might account for the behavior of God’s chosen people. God told the Israelites: I will deliver you from Pharaoh, will go before you, will provide for your needs, will drive out the peoples living in the Promised Land so you can occupy it—Plan A, if you will.
Jacob's descendants kept insisting they knew better than God—their Plan B. They kept returning to the worship of the Egyptian gods. They fought battles to take the Promised Land. They wanted a king of their own (Exodus 32 and Psalm 106).
God kept reminding them: I brought you out of Egypt; I will provide for you. God performed miracle after miracle to do it. God kept trying to keep their hearts pointed at Him. And yet, year by year, they moved further and further away. When they went into battle without God’s approval, they lost. When their king disobeyed, God replaced that king with His own choice. God's prophets kept reminding them of Plan A: Trust God for your needs, and trust God to handle your enemies.
God can see it all, understands fully. God asks us to trust Him when it comes to facts not presently in evidence. This week’s passages revolve around this idea of trusting God, depending on God’s promises, having faith that what God has told us is the truth (Isaiah 25).
Jesus and those He sent keep pointing us back to God's Plan A: Love your enemies and pray for them, trust God with your concerns (Philippians 4). Instead of filling our minds with things like revenge, God points us to the best thoughts, the kind of thoughts we can think all day every day—if we're not busy planning the downfall of our enemies!
For some reason, though, we humans keep insisting there must be a Plan B—the plan we come up with that is not God's plan. Why do we do that?
If we’re driving through the Big Bend area of Texas, what we see are mountains, valleys, cacti, scrub brush, and desert life. But if we’re willing to allow a different perspective—to believe what we’ve been told—we can also see something from a different time: an ocean teeming with aquatic life.
God has a better perspective from which to see all that is true and real, much of which we cannot perceive. And so, God asks us to trust in His plan, to believe what we’ve been told, to stop trying to live our own Plan B.
We, too, can choose to follow Plan A.
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PHOTO (and Info about the Permian Sea):
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/when-texas-was-bottom-sea-180953653/
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On Friday morning, we gather on Zoom** and at Our Breakfast Place for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. Join us at 8:00 for Bible, prayer, discussion, and laughter.
Blessings,
Steve
**Contact me for the Zoom link
NOTE: Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=163
Print them from here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/pdf//Ax_Proper23.pdf
Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14
Proper 23 (28) (October 15, 2023)
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