Devotion:
For an audio version of this devotion, click here.
Read Exodus 3:7-10.
As we prepare for Christmas this month, our focus is going to be on Bethlehem. This week, we are looking at various gifts God gave down through Biblical history prior to the birth of Jesus. This passage from Exodus is one I have often used around Christmas to remind us that God’s willingness to come and be with us did not begin with Jesus. God has had that desire from the time we humans were first created.
Here, God is in the midst of calling Moses to go to Egypt and confront the Pharaoh about letting God’s people go. As part of that conversation God says that he has seen what is happening to his people and heard their cries for deliverance. “So, I have come down to rescue them….” That is incarnational language; Emmanuel (“God is with us”) language.
God still seeks to be with us, to rescue us, to challenge us, to comfort us, to guide us; to be our God. Hear and know that message for yourself today. Know that God is with you in Spirit, but God is also with you through many people around you. Oh, and by the way, keep your “spiritual ears” open, because God call you at any time to go be with someone else on God’s behalf. Receive the gift of God’s presence and be ready to help be that gift to someone else.
Personal Worship Option:
In 1981 Dan Schutte wrote a prayer hymn that was included in our United Methodist Hymnal. Here is the first verse and chorus. May it be your prayer today.
I, the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard my people cry. All who dwell in dark and sin my hand will save.
I who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright. Who will bear my light to them? Whom shall I send?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.
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