Daily Thought

The first request to Pharoah to let the people go to worship is rebuffed angrily. The king accuses the people of being idle - in his view they should be too busy to worship, which of course today is still a ploy of Satan. Pharoah devises a plan to make the people work harder. He demands that the same number of bricks be made each day, but the workers must now find their own straw. This made the task virtually impossible, yet the officers drove the people on in a fruitless attempt to please Pharoah.

The people complain to Pharoah but are spurned. Thus, they vent their anger on Moses and Aaron - men who had promised much but failed to deliver. Wisely, Moses and Aaron took the complaint to God. However, rather than representing God to the people and offering them comfort and counsel they chose to identify themselves with the complaint. They demand to know why God has evil intreated the people - of course He hadn’t, it was Pharoah. Moses explicitly blames God, ‘he hath done evil to this people; neither has thou delivered thy people’. Finally, Moses gets to the point that is really bothering him, ‘Why is it that hast thou sent me?’.

The complaint of the people can readily be understood. Since Moses had announced the great plan for deliverance from Egypt, things had gone from bad to worse. The people were forced to work harder and were physically beaten when they were unable to produce the same number of bricks as before. Furthermore, Pharoah was angry, and an impasse had been reached. Prospects were grim and some people would soon die. Didn’t God care?

Sometimes we may find ourselves in similar circumstances when there appears to be no way out. We blame ourselves, or others; we are tempted even to blame God and to question whether His call to service is worth all the hassle - why not let some other person do it? Lessons, however, have to be learned. Don’t expect miracles, though they may happen. Don’t expect instant answers, though they are sometimes provided even before the request is made. Don’t expect things to get better, they may temporarily get worse. We must be like Moses, who, even though the problem seemed intractable he took it to the Lord. Already, God was at work behind the scenes.