Passover Preparation - Day 1 - Our Cry to God

[David Simon]

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. 25 And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God took heed of them. (Exodus 2:23-25)

     Passover begins with prayer. The seventy members of the family of Jacob went down to Egypt during a time of famine. While the Hebrew people lived in exile (400 years), a change occurred in the Egyptian government. The new regime was not accepting of this privileged class of foreign people, and actually feared the Hebrew people, who had grown in population. So they put them into slavery.
     For a period of time the Hebrew people went along with their enslavement. At first they were in shock at how fast their status had changed under the new regime whom they feared. Then as generations passed their status became “normal” and they saw no way out but to accept their “lot in life.” With the passage of time, and a new generation who observed how the rest of the world lived, expected tasks wore on the people. They saw the freedom others were experiencing, and they began to cry out to God in their pain.
     Nowhere in the story does the Bible tell us that God forgot His people. To the contrary, the Bible teaches us God loved His people then, and God loves his people today. The topic of this devotion is relationship and prayer. God’s people accepted life as it came, dwelling in the normality of daily life, and in the routine of this schedule they forgot to pray. Perhaps they were busy (because their taskmasters demanded it); but the point is they were not praying daily and gaining the strength from the relationship with God as His people.
     When we forget to pray; when we lose the most important part of our relationship with God, and all of life becomes a crisis. Within the routine, the crisis was allowed to become severe. And God’s people (after talking and complaining to each other … just like we do today!) began to complain to God. They cried out in their pain, and God heard their cry.
     The question is, how is your relationship with God? Do you pray daily? Do you read the Bible daily? The concept of faith begins with the continual presence of God. God desires us to seek, desire and acknowledge that relationship, and in the relationship to seek Him in His word (the Bible) and prayer. Group meetings are then an enrichment and not the context of our faith.