December 8

The God Who Comes Down

Most of the season is spent at work. The season fills the evenings, but the days still belong to the job. Advent arrives in the middle of all that, without announcing itself.

Moses was at work when God spoke to him. He was in Midian keeping another man's sheep, a long way from Egypt and from the people he had left behind there, and he had led the flock out to the back of the wilderness. Then the ordinary day opened.

The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, "Moses! Moses!" He said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your sandals off your feet, for the place you are standing on is holy ground."

The Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey."

Exodus 3:2-8a (selection)

Before God says a word about sending anyone anywhere, he says what he has already done. He has seen the affliction. He has heard the cry. He knows their sorrows, and he has come down.

None of it began that morning. Israel had been in Egypt for generations. Exodus says that God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that was already true while they were still in the brickyards.

God met Moses at work in an ordinary week, and the place was holy for one reason: God was there.

A few verses further on, Moses asks what name he should give when the people ask who sent him, and God answers, "I AM WHO I AM." In an argument about Abraham, Jesus said, "Most certainly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM." The church has heard the bush in that sentence ever since. The voice that spoke out of the fire and the child born at Bethlehem are the same God, and his answer to the affliction of his people has always been to come down himself.

Some of what we bring to God we have brought to him many times before, and nothing has visibly changed. The people in Egypt could not see that God had heard them, and he had heard them all the same.

Our thanks today belongs to a God who has never needed persuading to notice his people. He sees what is never said out loud, he knows what his people carry, and he comes down. At Christmas he came down as a child.

Lord, you see affliction and you hear your people. Meet me in the ordinary places of this week, and keep me trusting you through what I cannot yet see. You came down to deliver, and I thank you.