First Exodus

I'm spending some time thinking about First Exodus for my house church meeting. As you can see I'm writing this at nearly midnight Saturday, so you should be impressed that I am way ahead of schedule.

You might be curious about First Exodus (wasn't there just THE Exodus?).

Wellllllllll, I'm thinking about Moses on a personal level. He experienced an exodus on a personal level four decades before THE Exodus.

There was a time in the life of Moses when everything was going his way. Son of the king, wealth, privilege, honor, power. Moses had a future that was known, predictable and most desired. He had a security known by few in the history of the world. He was a family member of one of the most powerful families in the world. Moses got it going on.

But something wasn't quite right. He had this vague and growing sense that despite every piece of evidence pointing toward a good life, something was wrong, like a sound you never hear until it stops, and you realize it stopped and that it had always been there.

The more he learns the more he realizes that he is in conflict with himself, with his family, with his nation, and with his own people. Everything Moses had believed was true was a lie. His people, his real people, were slaves - and he was helping cause their slavery. No amount privilege was a worthy exchange for what he was participating in. He was not part of the solution; he was part of the problem. He was no politician, he was a perpetrator.

So he left.

He abandoned prestige, power, privilege, honor, security and everything he had grown accustomed to. All things familiar - gone. Not only did he leave from what he knew, he left to what he did not know.

He left what he knew
He shed 40 years of identity
He began a new life with a humble identity
He joined a new community
He'd accepted the reality of simple life

Then he was ready to lead.

What I gain from First Exodus is that all of life is training for the rest of life. I also gain that life in its many forms has meaning. Moses might have been tempted to believe that living in Egypt was real life - a meaningful life. At the same time the temptation to be believe 40 years leading a bunch of dumb sheep around had no meaning.

Truth is he needed all of the experience that he had from Egypt and shepherding in order to pull of his most important task, THE Exodus.

All of life is meaningful, no matter what. Victor Frankl would be all juiced about that last sentence. It was Frankl's belief that if a person believes his or her life has meaning, then they can endure any kind of life. He survival of Nazi death camps might just give his theory some weight. It is what got him though it. By the way, he created his "meaning theory" before he went throught the death camps, so in he got a real life opportunity to try it out.

Summary: Life is meaningful and it is, regardless of the the evidence, going some where.