Fire in the Desert

Hi there, and welcome to the Friday edition of Our Daily Bread. Today's reading was written by Tim Gustafson, and he titled it Fire in the Desert. While riding in the Chihuahuan Desert in the late 1800s, Jim White spotted a strange cloud of smoke spiraling skyward. Suspecting a wildfire, the young cowboy rode toward the source only to learn that the smoke was a vast swarm of bats spilling from a hole in the ground.

White had come across New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns, an immense and spectacular system of caves. As Moses was tending sheep in a Middle Eastern desert, he too saw an odd sight that grabbed his attention, a flaming bush that didn't burn up. When God himself spoke from the bush in Exodus chapter 3, Moses realized he had come to something far grander than it had first appeared. The Lord told Moses, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham. God was about to lead an enslaved people to freedom and show them their true identity as his children. More than 600 years earlier, God had made this promise to Abraham, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. The flight of the Israelites from Egypt was but one step in that blessing. God's plan to rescue his creation through the Messiah, Abraham's descendant. Today we can enjoy the benefits of that blessing, for God offers this rescue to everyone.

Christ came to die for the sins of the whole world. By faith in him, we too become children of the living God. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is taken from the second book in the Bible, Exodus chapter 3 verses 1 through 10. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight, why the bush does not burn up. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses, and Moses said, Here I am. Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.

I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.

So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. Now let's pray. Dear loving God, thank you for sending us your son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin by dying on the cross in our place as a substitute for our sin. This was all a part of your great and marvelous plan to rescue us and to welcome us into your presence as children. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name that we trust you and pray. Amen.