It Came Anyway

"God will will be done."

WHEN JOSEPH WAS SENT TO EGYPT, it was a different place. When he was promoted from prison to the storehouse, it was as a worker for Pharaoh. Pharaoh knew him and gave him authority. When his family showed up, looking for food, and they were reunited with Joseph, they were given a place in Egypt tax-free. Four hundred years later, their descendants were the greatest population in Egypt … AS SLAVES. It was not the same place. This Pharaoh feared the Israelites and had no idea who Joseph was.

When Jesus went through Samaria and sat by the well where the Samaritan woman had come, it was not the same place. What God had promised Abraham in covenant had become the nation of Israel, which in the glory days of King David and his son, Solomon, had had renown among the surrounding nations. Divided by greed, desiccated by war, its people had later been severed from the promise and sent to Babylon. Now under Roman control, who they’d been was now division based on years of history and idol worship. All the Samaritan woman knew was the old argument. Do we worship here or in Jerusalem?

The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome of salvation through Jesus Christ. He, an educated Pharisee, had been sent to preach to the Gentiles, and the Jews continually stood in his way. Though he admitted salvation had come through the Jews, the blessing of Abraham was now for all nations. All who would call upon Jesus’ name would be reborn in the kingdom of God. Yet, his heart bled for his people. “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved (Romans 10:1).” It wasn’t the same anymore. The Law, the commandments of the Law, hundreds of years of priests and sacrifices, now focused only on the cross and the Savior who’d died there. And risen again.

They couldn’t see it. What had begun as God was now performed by meaningless rote from voices filled with dissension.

The Samaritans didn’t see it until the Samaritan woman declared Jesus among them. “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (John 4:29) And they came. And they saw.

Israel didn’t see it, even when standing in Babylon. Instead, they heaped unto themselves false voices to declare their soon freedom. Then Jeremiah, God’s prophet, spoke. “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them (Jeremiah 29:5).” For they’d be there seventy years. There’d be no immediate return, no rebuilding of Jerusalem until a foreign king funded it, at God’s hand.

Jesus stood in the temple and preached the kingdom of God. He healed the sick and cast out devils, only to be mocked for it. Derided by those who He’d been prophesied to save. They couldn’t see it. Children danced at Jesus’ feet crying, “Hosanna! Hosanna!” and the religious leaders gnashed their teeth, slavering for His death. There stood their Christ, born of a virgin, the very Son of God, but all they could see was receding Roman power and their hands as empty as they’d become.

There is only a small comparison. Nothing is as grand and majestic as He who died and rose again. But today, in the marketplace, we view hatred clothed as acceptance, deception painted commonplace, and a thousand rumors in the devil’s clothing mixed with pulpits and politics, and we can’t see the future. We’re Israel dragged to Babylon, wishing for Egypt that God saved us from, and Abraham is dead and gone, and our Messiah looks like a man who won’t shut up. Where is the America that men have died for? Where is the one people have lived for? And borders that take in those wishing for entrance because like Casablanca, they’re caught up in a war they can’t escape except for the dream on the horizon across the wide sea. There, in that land, is safety. Freedom.

We’ve become a land of false doctrine, written on the palms of theologians and educators, with more knowledge than you can shake a stick at but no God at all, and a nation without God ends up as slaves, despite a covenant spoken and bled for and that which created the world destined to be birthed amongst it. God’s blessing on Abraham was about saving people. God’s blessing on Israel was about saving people. God’s blessing on people was the salvation of the world. Though they couldn’t see it, though it’d been written and spoken, though they decried it and crucified it, it came anyway.

Though the enemy fought against it and fell into it, Jesus of Nazareth sits as King of Kings at the right hand of God, the Father, and the Spirit which anointed Him, graces us all. And even if men deny it and spit on it and bury it deep in the earth, that which formed this nation still pulses within it. God’s will will be done. The pieces float around us, slippery in our grasp, but firm and confident in His. Fear is not an element in His view, nor our hatred of each other, nor the separation of government and church. For just like Abraham was blessed in a land which he did not own, amongst people who did not know what God had planned for them, and just like Moses faced Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go,” only to have his words fall dead in Pharaoh’s lap, and just like Jesus faced Pilate, asked, “What is truth?”, there is a path we stride upon that only God could have made.

And there is our confidence. Not in the number of lies told about us, told to us, told within us, nor the shifting sands beneath monuments built by men of a difference face. Not in the color of mountains, nor the health or sickness of our plains. Nor that one sea reaches the other because of the landscape between it. But that God put us here, and He who sees all, hears all, and is amongst us all until the world’s end. “I will never leave thee or forsake thee,” is a promise we can wave, shaped like a cross, lit like a candle, shot like a cannon, which splits into starlight.

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Line Art Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com