In sorting through some of this I am struck by the reality that sometimes it requires what I would say is a certain amount of holy discontent with the way things are in my life to cause me to change. I like to think I am someone who is okay with change but what I see is that there are some things in my life that I won't change until the pain of not changing becomes acute enough for me to get past the inertia of complacency.
In our daily reading for the next week or two we are in Exodus where God sends the plagues on the Egyptians in order to make it possible for the Israelites to leave. It strikes me that in the beginning of the book the Israelites are slaves and aren't happy but when Pharaoh makes things more difficult for them they get mad at Moses and blame him for the "problem." Along the way in the years in the wilderness, they recall the time in Egypt with a certain wistful tone, and their memory of it gets better the longer they are in the wilderness. The things they remember are the things they don't have in the wilderness, not the bitter slavery of those days.
We tend to remember the good old days without the bad parts included. God has to give them commands regarding the Passover feast and the Feast of Booths which forces them to live as their ancestors did, i.e. not in permanent dwellings, for a period of time. Both those festivals require them to participate by remembrance in the bitterness and difficulty of life their ancestors had. It is only through that participatory remembering that they are able to celebrate with joy their new situation in the land of promise.
It seems to me that inertia is our biggest enemy. God is calling us to more or less constant change for the better and we find our place of comfort and settle in, look at the couch or chairs in most people's houses and you can see that physically as true. Pain is often what we need to start moving again.
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