" I have seen Your Affliction"
"I have seen your affliction " Exodus , Luke & others
A lot of people now think it does not matter what I do, where I do it, and how I do it. Somehow God has been written out of our lives in our country. I do not mean just having " In God We Trust" on the money. The ethics is gone. But without God there is no ethics. We just go with the flow, or do what ever we want without thinking of its consequences. Or perhaps someone higher up on the food chain approves the action. Does that fix it? Well we may get what we want, but we will reap the consequences of our inability to do the right thing. Posting the Ten Commandments is not the answer either by the way. I wish more churches would however since that is the standard. Trying to slap that on others without any forethought seems shallow to me. Well -meaning Christians differ on where they should be put such things , and why...just as well-meaning Christians differ on how to observe Sunday properly. But they are binding on every living being anyway, the Moral Law of God , known as the Ten Commandments.
In a more positive sense God knows and does care about our affliction. This is the reading today from Exodus. It may be good to insert the end of ch 2 before we read of Moses & his encounter with God at the burning bush. " And it came to pass in the course of those many days, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac , and with Jacob. And God saw the children of Israel , and God took knowledge of them." " I have surely seen the affliction of my people....for I know their sorrows."
How true we feel forgotten so often in our own lives. We may think this is the case but God does not forget. It is His nature to know all things, for He is Divine, and we are as His created people & will not be forgotten by Him. It may be we are thinking it is has been so long that such and such has not happened or things do not go the way we wish. We see no activity as did Moses for so many years in the desert after he left Egypt. He was called to something else for years , seemingly in quiet place among the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law. No matter how slow the scene may appear it is appointed by Him;God calls us to remain faithful to His Word, His people and His will whatever & wherever it may be, no matter because He is in charge of where we are .
In the Gospel today we see Jesus rescuing a woman who had been ill for 18 years. It is attributed to Satan in vs 16 of Luke 13---that is her illness. We do not know the situation but we know she was healed by Jesus . It seems there was no faith as such by the woman but Jesus saw her and said, " Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity."
This theme of rescue and relief by Divine intervention continues in the Epistle reading too from I Corinthians 10:13, " There hath no temptation (testing---greek as well ) taken you but such as man can bear: but God is faithful , who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it." Trial is another synonym.
Have we been delivered from a testing or trial ? Life is so full of them that we wonder why we have to have them . James helps us here...James 1:2, " Count it all joy, my brethren , when ye fall into manifold temptations ( or trials); knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience. And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire lacking in nothing."
Apparently when Jesus does His work in our lives, not everyone is happy. The ruler of the synagogue was " moved with indignation because Jesus had healed on the sabbath..." But the result was in Luke 13:17, " And as He said these things , all His adversaries were put to shame: and all the multitudes rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him." Even in the wilderness we learned in I Corinthians that the fathers were led and passed through the sea, but " with most of them God was not well pleased..." They murmured, complained and committed sexual sin . This led to their spiritual and physical death . 10:8
Being in the Church in the pews is not a guarantee of eternal life as well. We must experience individual deliverance by God through His Son Jesus Christ in salvation. This is true for the clergy as well, and leaders.
I rejoice in God's leading His faithful people in trials for " He has seen our affliction" " He knows our sorrows". Can we ask for anything else?
A lot of people now think it does not matter what I do, where I do it, and how I do it. Somehow God has been written out of our lives in our country. I do not mean just having " In God We Trust" on the money. The ethics is gone. But without God there is no ethics. We just go with the flow, or do what ever we want without thinking of its consequences. Or perhaps someone higher up on the food chain approves the action. Does that fix it? Well we may get what we want, but we will reap the consequences of our inability to do the right thing. Posting the Ten Commandments is not the answer either by the way. I wish more churches would however since that is the standard. Trying to slap that on others without any forethought seems shallow to me. Well -meaning Christians differ on where they should be put such things , and why...just as well-meaning Christians differ on how to observe Sunday properly. But they are binding on every living being anyway, the Moral Law of God , known as the Ten Commandments.
In a more positive sense God knows and does care about our affliction. This is the reading today from Exodus. It may be good to insert the end of ch 2 before we read of Moses & his encounter with God at the burning bush. " And it came to pass in the course of those many days, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac , and with Jacob. And God saw the children of Israel , and God took knowledge of them." " I have surely seen the affliction of my people....for I know their sorrows."
How true we feel forgotten so often in our own lives. We may think this is the case but God does not forget. It is His nature to know all things, for He is Divine, and we are as His created people & will not be forgotten by Him. It may be we are thinking it is has been so long that such and such has not happened or things do not go the way we wish. We see no activity as did Moses for so many years in the desert after he left Egypt. He was called to something else for years , seemingly in quiet place among the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law. No matter how slow the scene may appear it is appointed by Him;God calls us to remain faithful to His Word, His people and His will whatever & wherever it may be, no matter because He is in charge of where we are .
In the Gospel today we see Jesus rescuing a woman who had been ill for 18 years. It is attributed to Satan in vs 16 of Luke 13---that is her illness. We do not know the situation but we know she was healed by Jesus . It seems there was no faith as such by the woman but Jesus saw her and said, " Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity."
This theme of rescue and relief by Divine intervention continues in the Epistle reading too from I Corinthians 10:13, " There hath no temptation (testing---greek as well ) taken you but such as man can bear: but God is faithful , who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it." Trial is another synonym.
Have we been delivered from a testing or trial ? Life is so full of them that we wonder why we have to have them . James helps us here...James 1:2, " Count it all joy, my brethren , when ye fall into manifold temptations ( or trials); knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience. And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire lacking in nothing."
Apparently when Jesus does His work in our lives, not everyone is happy. The ruler of the synagogue was " moved with indignation because Jesus had healed on the sabbath..." But the result was in Luke 13:17, " And as He said these things , all His adversaries were put to shame: and all the multitudes rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him." Even in the wilderness we learned in I Corinthians that the fathers were led and passed through the sea, but " with most of them God was not well pleased..." They murmured, complained and committed sexual sin . This led to their spiritual and physical death . 10:8
Being in the Church in the pews is not a guarantee of eternal life as well. We must experience individual deliverance by God through His Son Jesus Christ in salvation. This is true for the clergy as well, and leaders.
I rejoice in God's leading His faithful people in trials for " He has seen our affliction" " He knows our sorrows". Can we ask for anything else?
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