Here's the scene: a damsel, dangling from a rope with little to no strength left is towering above a city. She is waiting for help of any form to save her from splattering on the ground and is about to give up hope when...oh surprize: the superhero miraculously flies in and whisps her off to safety before brutally beating the nemesis who put her there. Sweet, awesome....real life never works that way. We often find our selves at the end of a rope and all we end up with is a broken ankle and rope burn....because we're danginling off the side of a one story house (nothing sexy like a 100 story building) and we usually walk ourselves inside to put some ice on our wound that hurts way worse than anyone gives us credit for, and sorely sit on the couch and eat a bag of cheetos as we lament our decisions. Yeah...life....you're grand sometimes. Whoever gave me the idea of climbing onto the roof of my house anyway? Oh yeah, that was me. I put myself there, now I have to explain to everyone why I'm walking with a limp and have bandaged hands.....maybe I'll whip out a story about saving a bus full of orphans about to crash into a freezing river? None the less, my point is we often find ourselves lost and disappointed at the fact that no one is there to rescue us, we usually have to rescue ourselves...and we usually suck at it.
Maybe we need to look deeper. Let's take this totally crazy story and see how it could POSSIBLY relate to our boring, mundane lives:
We all know the story of Moses right? He's an orphaned baby found by an Egyptian princess, adopted into royalty then on the run for murder? He sees a burning bush, hears from God to save his Israelite people from Egyptian oppression and ulitmately leads them through a Sea, to a desert where they eat heavenly manna. Yeah cool, life doesn't work like that either right? Our version of a burning bush is a text message our friend sends us and our version of eating heavenly manna is driving through Taco Bell on the way home. Cool....why am I posting this totally irrelevent story? Well, since you asked, because it's actually relevant...and here's why....
"The Prince of Egypt" won't tell you this....but when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land via the parted Red Sea....it didn't happen instantly like we think. It wasn't: "Oh no the Egyptians are coming! Good thing this huge ocean is opening up so we can run through it....why did we worry in the first place?" Actually, it took all night. God's Holy Spirit presented himself as a pillar of fire that protected the Israelites in a night-long battle with the Egyptians before the red sea parted. AKA....if I were them I would have felt screwed, not saved.
I find God does that often....he waits.....and waits.....and waits until we are at our wits end before he saves us. Why? Because he is a sadistic freak who wants to see us squirm like an ant under a magnifying glass? I dare say no. I think it's because he want's appreciation. Think about it.....if your grandma gives you 20 bucks on your birthday, but you make several grand a month....you say: "oh cool, thanks grandma....that really makes no difference in my life right now...guess I'll buy a happy meal." But if that 20 bucks comes mid-college career when you live off top ramen and have -5 dollars in your bank account....that 20 bucks looks like a lump of gold and you appreciate grandma more than ever. If God didn't allow us to succumb to atleast a little bit of trial, we wouldn't appreciate him ever. We would merely expect him to just remedy things immediately and serve us on cue. However, if God allowed us to truly see what we could be victim to, then we would appreciate his saving us.
Don't get me wrong, I would probably be convinced God was awesome if the sea parted immediately, or the next day- but God clearly wanted to test the faith of the Israelites and prove that he's there at the very last moment....so we kind of are like the dangling damsel with no hope left. It's never very romantic if the super hero saves her when she trips now is it?
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