Our Place

This year has only just come to birth, and there are still 360 days left till the year's end.
What possibilities does this year hold for the child of God?

It wasn't a new year when Moses stood before the Red Sea, 
but it was a new stage of life which lay before him and the children of Israel.

After leaving the bondage of Egypt the road ahead was now totally blocked by the waters of the sea.

Humanly speaking they had reached the end.

Their journey had finished as soon as it had begun, and there was no way forward.

A journey lay behind him,
from the ark in the waters of the Nile,
to the court of pharaoh,
to the exile in the desert,
to the return to Egypt.

And a journey lay before him.
A journey to an unknown land,
through unknown challenges of unknown days.

It was at this juncture that God spoke.

     It was here that Moses both heard and obeyed,
          and stretched his hand over the impossible waters.

Think of Moses stretching forth his hand over the sea … 

     What an authority he took from the very hand of God. 
     What a place to enter with God!

     What a step to take before the presence of all Israel.
     What a challenge to the forces of nature.

That last step out of Egypt must have marked a turning point in Moses' life in his relation to the realm of God.
          He took his step alone without human support,
               and entered his place as a son of God.

I feel that this is a time that we are all being challenged to find a new realm in God,
     in the presence of all that surrounds us,
          standing before all that seems impossible,
               and all that would deny us a way forward.

In the days of this year stretching before us let us take our place, and find the fulness of God's purpose for our lives.
Let us step beyond the known, and find God as our sufficiency in the unexplored days which lie ahead.

Here is God's promise:
"Call unto Me, and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." (Jer. 33.3)