Readings:
Exodus 8:1 - 9:35
Matthew 19: 13-30
Psalm 24: 1-10
Proverbs 6: 1-5
Exodus reading: Frogs, locusts, gnats, boils, hail, dead animals - these are some of the plagues befell Egypt due to Pharaoh's hardened heart and ro release the Israelite slavery. And of course, at Sunday School we tend to focus on the plagues themselves. On the other hand, there are some scientists who maintain that it is physically impossible for such events to have occurred at all.
But the plagues themselves are not the point. How often do we try to bargain with God, begging God to take way some or other calamity and promising to do good if only this calamity could be taken away? And no sooner does God come through and bring us out of the storm, than we go back to our old ways and forget about serving God. Little wonder, then, that some of us seem to spend our lives lurching from one crisis to the next.
God is not an ATM - deposit today, withdraw tomorrow. God is God. And we should serve God not because of what we can get, but because of who God is. While this is no guarantee that the calamities of life won't impact us, we will be in a far better place knowing the God we serve, rather than trying to strike a bargain with God for which we have no intention of keeping up our end.
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