Day 34 – The Sea will make way
The sea will make way They are out. After four hundred years, after ten plagues, after a night of blood on the doorframe, after Pharaoh’s own voice said go the Israelites are walking out of Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of them. With their children. With their livestock. With the silver and gold and clothing the […]
Day 33 – The blood on the door
The blood on the door Nine plagues and Pharaoh has not moved. His heart has been hardened and softened and hardened again like metal worked in a forge. And God tells Moses something that should stop us: I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs […]
Day 32 – Every false god will fall
Every False god will fall The plagues are coming. And before we read them as spectacle frogs and flies and darkness and hail we need to understand what they actually were. Each plague was a direct confrontation with a specific Egyptian deity. The Nile was a god. The frog was sacred to Heqet, goddess of […]
Day 31 – Send Someone Else
Send Someone Else The burning bush is still burning. The voice of God is still speaking. And Moses is still finding reasons why this will not work. He has asked who God is. He has asked who he himself is. And now he starts working through his list of objections. What if they don’t believe […]
Day 30 – Take Off Your Sandals. This Ground Is Holy.
Take Off Your Sandals. This Ground Is Holy. Genesis ended with a dying man asking to carry his bones home. Four hundred years have passed since then. The family of seventy that walked into Egypt has become a nation of millions and Pharaoh is terrified of them. Exodus opens not with triumph but with chains. […]
Day 29 – What God Intended All Along
What God Intended All Along. We have been in Genesis for most of this month. We have watched God make a world, lose it to sin, rescue it through a flood, call a man from Ur, wrestle with his grandson, and orchestrate a betrayal in a pit that became the salvation of a continent. And […]
Day 28 – I Will Go With You
I Will Go With You. Jacob is one hundred and thirty years old. He has buried a wife he loved and mourned a son he thought was dead for twenty-two years. He has wrestled with God and walked with a limp ever since. He has watched his family fracture and hold and fracture again. And […]
Day 27 – You Meant It for Evil. God Meant It for Good.
You Meant It for Evil. God Meant It for Good. Something has changed in Judah. The man who sold his brother is now offering himself as surety for his brother. Twenty years of living with what he did has done something to him. The guilt that the brothers felt when they saw Joseph’s distress and […]
Day 26 – The Moment the Pit Was Preparing Him For
The Moment the Pit Was Preparing Him For Two years. That is how long Joseph waited in prison after the cupbearer forgot him. Two years of doing his job faithfully in a cell. Two years of interpreting dreams correctly and watching nothing change for himself. Two years of not knowing whether the promise in his […]
Day 25 – Faithful in the Dark
Faithful in the Dark Genesis 38 is the chapter that interrupts the Joseph story at its most suspenseful moment. Joseph has just been sold to Potiphar. We want to follow him. We want to know what happens in Egypt. And instead the narrative pivots to Judah and what follows is one of the most uncomfortable, […]
