God looked upon the Israelites and was concerned about them (Ex. 2:25).
I'm wondering if He is looking upon us now with concern. We have become so "plugged in" to the world around us that it is almost impossible for us to hear the quiet, still voice of our own spirits and of God. We wake up in the morning and turn on the morning news; we check our cell-phones for e-mail (someone else's thoughts, not our own); even on vacation now, we do not unplug -- we must be in constant communication with the world of celebreties, politics, gossip, you-tube videos, and our friends.
Someone posted an article this morning on fb: "Our Morning Routines are Making Us Dull." In other words, by switching on the tv and radio first thing, we have snuffed out the creativity shouting in our own souls. Before I read that, in my quiet time this morning, I had a life-sized image that made me laugh: I "saw" Jesus and all 12 Apostles walking down a dusty Jerusalem road checking their i-phones for the latest messages. None of them were conversing, listening, thinking, turning over ideas, or absorbing energy from one another. All of them were tuned in somewhere else --- and none of the sites to which they were tuned in had even the least importance!
Why was God "concerned" about the Israelites in Egypt? Why did He want them to "go into the desert to worship" Him? Worship is intimately connected with freedom. As long as we are groaning under the burden of slavery, we have no freedom to choose another path. We have no leisure to discern the good and the right. And we are now slaves to constant communication; the ads now ridicule people who are even 27 seconds "behind" in getting the latest news.
Worship is intimately connected with wisdom. The writer of Ecclesiastes says this: Who can possibly know what is best for a man to do in life---the few days of his fleeting life? For who can tell him what the future holds for him under the sun? .... The secret of what happens is elusive and deep, deep down; who can discover it? Yet God reveals His secrets to His servants -- a theme that runs throughout the Bible from beginning to end. In worship, we receive truth, and truth sets us free, so that we are no longer enslaved to the "latest" opinion, viewpoint, or revelation.
Jesus told Nicodemus: You are a teacher in Israel, and you do not know these things? If you do not understand when I speak to you about things on earth, how will you comprehend when I speak to you of things of heaven? (Jn. 3). Somehow I recall a phrase -- I thought it was from Ecclesiastes, but cannot now find it -- that went like this:
What is on earth is exceedingly deep,
but what is in heaven, how shall we find it out?
The natural man cannot discern the things of the spirit (I Cor. 2:14), but they are revealed to us in worship, or spirit-to-Spirit communication. If we have the chance to walk with Jesus early in the morning, or to sit with Him in the evening, let us not be plugged into our electronic devices listening to and watching the latest "news." I remember years ago one of my colleagues asking if I had listened to the morning news. I told her that I never listened to the morning "news;" morning was when I listened to the "eternities."
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