I'm thinking today of the story in the Bible where Moses meets God essentially in the burning bush.
After taking his shoes off because it's totally ground, Moses averts his face.
He looks away because he's afraid to look at God and the Lord begins to speak.
And he says, I have indeed seen the misery of my people.
Boy, that's loaded, isn't it? But we have a lot of misery now.
God's people are suffering in many ways all over the earth.
They're not the only ones suffering. Basically everyone's suffering.
There is suffering on the highway of holiness.
One kind of suffering or another.
Well, God has seen the misery of his people.
And he says, so I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them out,
out of that land into a good and spacious land.
He describes how the land that he will send them into is a land of flowing with milk and honey.
And he names the people that currently live there at the end of chapter eight.
He says, and now the quiet Israelites in chapter, I'm sorry, the end of verse eight.
And now in verse nine, it says, and now the quiet Israelites has reached me
and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
Does this sound like a God plan?
Does this sound like a plan that God has worked multiple times in the history of his people?
It is indeed.
And he sent Jesus to die on the cross, to win us out of an oppressive world.
And though we are still here serving him as his ambassadors in Christ,
we know he will come again to save us from the oppression that we are facing.
He'll turn our fortunes again.
We're looking forward to his coming.