When "He's" Been Gone 40 Days & 40 Nights

Concept source

Recently, I've been trying to be happy. I have been actively pursuing peace, love, joy and thanksgiving, in order to experience contentment and satisfaction in the life I currently lead. In this pursuit, I've come face to face with a kind of shocking reality about the way I have been pursuing things in my life. The story of Israelites in their exodus from Egypt came to mind when I thought of the things I don't yet have. I became really interested in the part of this story where Moses had been gone for forty days and forty nights. Apparently, Moses climbed Mount Sinai to talk to God and get direction, but the Israelites became anxious about their future when Moses took a long time to return. They asked Aaron, who had been left in charge to "create" them an image of God who had delivered them from Egypt, so that they could see and worship it. Aaron refused to create an image of the God of Israel, but eventually succumbed to pressure and fashioned a golden calf for the people of Israel. The Israelites made sacrifices to the idols and celebrated, and this made God irate, and He vowed to destroy the people of Israel, creating a new nation from Moses, but Moses pleaded with God to have mercy on the people.

I relate to the Israelites in this story, even though I'm not supposed to say that.

I could just say "CAN you believe those STUPID Israelites? They SAW all of those physical miracles performed by God, and still thought it would be worth worshipping idols because God and Moses were taking too long," but actually, I do the same thing on a regular basis. Maybe I don't actually melt my gold and worship it, but I definitely, definitely do get tired of waiting, and try to come up with an alternative that'll satisfy me.

How do we keep the sacred sacred when nothing is sacred any more?

I get the behaviour of the Israelites because our world is kind of like theirs in the dessert. Even when you are a praying and active person of faith, even when you've seen God do miracles in your life, you're still in a dessert day after day, and you get to the place where you wonder if those miracles really happened, or whether you just made them up. The miracles that God performs in our lives are sources of encouragement, and they usher us into the place, I believe, that God has for us. If you don't believe any of that, I hope you'll leave a comment or message and tell us what you think. What I think is that this is a concession that humans are not really built to believe things forever when they've only experienced them once, or when they haven't experienced them in a really long time.

If you think about it, how many relationships are really good for you that you haven't invested anything in for months or years? Some of us are thinking of that one friend we haven't spoken to in the longest time who we just fall right back into place with, but I'm talking about not an email, a phone call, a visit or a letter, in YEARS. Even if you smile fondly with that person when you do see them, the fact is your relationship isn't the kind where you know what's going on with the other day to day, and you didn't call them for help for that whole time you didn't speak, so your relationship is on a certain level and doesn't get any deeper.

Today at church the guest speaker preached from Psalm 23, and I found myself fixating on the line "My cup runneth over." Did you ever wonder why it didn't just say "my cup is always full?" I know that there's just a little symbolism in there where they're saying that what God provides exceeds what we can even contain, but what if our cups have to run over because the minute we drank what was in our cup we'd forget that it was ever full? I feel like the latter is probably the case, and because of that, it stands to reason in my mind that in order for me to not build millions of little golden calves that are depressingly inadequate to the real thing, I have to have access to my cup, and know that on my own, it is empty.

I think what happened with the Israelites is that they did a halfway job of assessing their situation (much like I do). They looked around at their dessert home, they noted the fact that their human leader, appointed by God, had been missing for more than a month and they started looking around for what they did have, and realised that they had two hands and all these earthly possessions, and surely that was enough to be satisfied by a god. What they didn't acknowledge was that their cup was empty, and it REALLY hurt, because they knew they couldn't fill it. This week, that is the point I've come to. This week, I have come to understand that my cup (me, as a stand-alone individual), is empty, and nothing I own, that I put in it will fill it. I have come to believe that God will fill my cup to overflowing, but in order for that to happen, I have to drink what He has poured, and I have to reposition it to where God is pouring.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that God doesn't meet us where we are, I'm just saying that I think you have to outstretch your cup-bearing hand and say "Fill me up, Lord!" I think God is ever ready to fill our cups, but we are too busy filling our own cups with things that we think will satisfy us. I think that what God is pouring is so plentiful, it has the potential to overflow our cups, if we would just stay still long enough for that to happen. I think that most of us get a full cup or half a cup, or a third of a cup and we walk away from God, using it all up quickly and then we wonder why everything sucks quite so badly when we fill our cups with TV or Facebook venting or career pursuit. So, my challenge for the week is to ask what things are filling your cup right now, and what areas of your life do you think you need to outstretch to God?