Nothing Just Happens Fall Series: Expecting An Encounter Installment Four Exodus 2:1-10, {Moses guided by currents into the purposes of God} There's an assumption we carry through life that what impacts us the most are two things. First, it's the things I've chosen for myself. Second, it's the things I can recall choosing for myself. If something happened in my life before either of these two things are possible then it must not matter that much. Physicians are changing the way we think about our earliest years. Some of the most essential development in our lives occurs within the first year. It's certainly true that children who are neglected, who grow up under highly stressful conditions, or who experience intense degrees of negativity, all of which will have a significant impact on formation. In later years we will bear the affects of this influence and these influences will impact how we then live. We'd like to think we go through life doing what we want, how we want, and when we want. These early influences will shape our outlook. It will form our emotional disposition. It will impact how we look at life and have a significant bearing on the decisions and choices we make. Unhealthy minds make unhealthy decisions and choices. Personalities that have been influenced in negative ways will gravitate toward negative options. Children can inherit for good or for bad the influences that surround one's upbringing. Children with a good upbringing have advantages. Children with a bad upbringing have disadvantages. What happens before we start choosing matters. Although I have no memory of the experience, I've seen the photos and heard the stories of how I was a miracle child. When I was born, I entered the world severely undersized and spent several days in an incubator before I was healthy enough to come home. My parents tell me the situation was severe and the church they were a part of lifted up fervent prayers on my behalf. Early on my condition was uncertain and doctors weren't sure how it would go. After these prayers, I made a rebound the doctors couldn't explain. No matter how much I concentrate or apply my skills of memory recall, I have no recollection of this event. However, to hear of this and to become aware of one's formation can alter outlook. It can create a perspective that will change how you think about your life. Somebody was making choices for me before I made my own choices. This is the whole point of infant baptism. For centuries the church has practiced infant baptism. What is the reason? Shouldn't we wait until a person is able to make their own choice before this 1
means anything? In the Old Testament, the Hebrews practiced circumcision. This was a way a child entered into the world with someone choosing for them. They inherited a way of life that one would then grow into. There's no denying a child must later embrace an inheritance, but it's undeniable that a person receives a way of life. Hebrews were to teach their children. Their minds were formed and their earliest words were prayer. Their perspective was ingrained. It influenced a spiritual mindset that could grow stronger as the years go by. Infant baptism is the most picturesque and vivid display that demonstrates God is active long before we realize it. One of the greatest miracles in the Bible happened to a child who was too young to make choices and would have no memory of the event that would serve as a defining moment long before any personal awareness was in place. The event would set the tone for the rest of this child's life. This child was too young to do his own believing so his mother had to do his believing for him. The child is Moses and it's the first narrative as we launch into the story of Exodus. All the Hebrew newborn males are under threat. Egypt has pronounced a death sentence. The mother of Moses decides to put her child's life entirely in God's hands. Imagine the blessing she offered over Moses as he was lowered into the water. Little child, hear it for the first time. Nothing just happens in your life. You are not driven by random currents. Your life is guided by the hand of God. There are some religions that teach how an impersonal energy shapes our path in life. Surrender to the currents and let impersonal forces guide you to perfect peace, meaning, and purpose. Little child, hear it for the first time. Nothing just happens in your life. Your life isn't guided by blind fate. There is no impersonal energy that just happens to place you in your destiny. Your life requires a personal, loving God who is fully invested in your life. This God cares more about your life than you ever will. This God cares more about placing people around you who will make decisions that will put you in a position of advantage, long before you are making even simple decisions. Little child, hear it for the first time. You are not the captain of your own soul. You are not the master of your own domain. You are not the pilot of your own future or purpose. At this point, the one we call Moses doesn't have a name. The child is lowered into a basket and given a blessing. God has named you and known you before any earthly parent will. As the child was lowered into the Nile River, the mother didn't wish for the blind fates to carry this child to a destiny. Before this child can make any decisions, here is a defining moment that shows how life is sustained. If God isn't the one responsible, then what is the alternative? It just so happens that the basket floated down stream. It just so happens that the currents carried him to a place where someone could find the 2
child. It just happens that it was carried to the one and only place were that someone, Pharaoh's daughter, is in a position to keep the child safe. It just happens then when the child is found Pharaoh's daughter feels concern and decides to accept the risk. Notice how when all those so happens compound, one would need more faith not to believe a personal being was involved, guiding things to completion with an unseen hand. There were several good reasons why Pharaoh's daughter should have acted in any other way. Turn around and go home. Dispose of the child. Contact the authorities. Do anything but take the child and claim him as your own. Instead, Pharaoh's daughter, who we never meet by name, decides to risk everything for a child whose God she didn't know. She decides to risk everything for a child that offered her nothing. She was gaining nothing and yet facing the possibility of losing everything. This story is more than one miracle. There were numerous miracles from the point the child was lowered into the Nile until the child was in the palace. Nothing just happens. There's a temptation in life to feel as if the currents carrying us are purely random. We sometimes look at our life and wonder, what are we doing? What is this about? How did I end up in this present moment? The mind starts to retrace steps. Things could have been this or they could have been that. The next story we're given of Moses right after his remarkable miracle story, he kills an Egyptian. He's forced to flee into the wilderness where he will spend the next 40 years tending sheep in the middle of nowhere. If I just hadn't been in that situation. If that person hadn't made me mad. If I hadn't reacted that way. If I had just called in sick that morning. If I had just turned left instead of turning right. On these terms it's easy to live with regrets. We start to look at all the decisions we made and all the things we can recall and think it could be different. Oh, if I could do it over, I would have done it different. Someone wise noted that life is understood backward but must be lived forward. Hindsight is always 20/20 but unfortunately that's not the direction we live. What we fail to see when we look back is more than coincidence or currents of blind fate carrying us to this present moment. It wasn't as if the basket in the stream was a miracle and the 40 years in the wilderness were not a miracle. The same God carrying Moses to completion in the beginning will be the same God carrying to completion in the end. It's true that we must live into those currents and cooperate with God's guiding hand. However, the purposes of God are going to reach completion one way or the other. The realization we come to is whether we will move in those currents as participants or as opponents, either way, God guides. The feeling we carry that our life is only a bundle of coincidences is one of our most significant 3
sources of burden, pressure, stress, and weariness. I could be in a better situation. I could be in an easier situation. I could have better friends. I could have a better job. I wouldn't have to tend sheep in the wilderness. For those 40 years what shaped his life more, the thought that I've got to get out of here and how it happens is dependent on my choices? Or, from the very beginning, I'm the beneficiary of choices made for me even before I was capable of simple decisions. Which will we embrace? Life will eventually push us to the place where one or the other perspective will dominate our outlook. We live in a culture that prizes the notion of independence. It's how we measure the quality of anything. If I didn't choose it then it must not have value. What medicine for the soul Moses would have enjoyed by revisiting that defining moment. My life is not drifting aimless. My life is not shaped by blind fates. My life is not driven by meaningless, purposeless forces. My life is not driven on its own accord. Long before he was capable of believing anything, his mother was believing for him. I want the first moment of your life to define you. I want you marked by the influence that nothing just happens. You can't steer yourself to a destiny in this basket. If God doesn't guide the currents then you are left helpless and hopeless. If God isn't the master of your domain then you are left at sea without a sail or a rudder. If God isn't the pilot of your future, then you are left to whichever way the wind blows. There is medicine in the affirmation that right here, right now, where I am, God is the hand that piloted me. I've often joked about the bumper sticker that was popular during my growing up years. You could walk through a church parking lot and nearly half the cars at the time would have the sticker proudly displayed. God is my Co-Pilot. I know the maker of this message meant well but process the message. I agree with Billy Graham when he noted if God is your Co-Pilot then you had better change seats. Our culture fixates upon the power of me and carries that sense of personal independence into spiritual thinking. If anything gets done, then it's up to me. If I'm to have a future, then it's up to me. If I'm to secure a purpose, then it's up to me. What an image of a vulnerable infant lowered into a basket and placed in the currents of the Nile. This child can't raise a sail. This child can't lower an oar. The first influence that will define Moses, nothing just happens. We'd like to think it's possible in this life to give ourselves a purpose. My options are dependent on what kind of world I inhabit. Do I live in a hopeful world? Do I live in a loving world? Do I live in a world where justice will triumph? For those who decide they will pursue purpose as survival of the fittest, treating life like jungle law, then what they call purpose will prove nothing more than failure. What they call success will prove nothing more than loss. Scripture is quite clear that all the ways I try 4
to give myself purpose may prove nothing more than a vapor, here one moment, and gone the next. I receive purpose as a gift. Long before Moses was capable of making decisions, someone offered a blessing over him. Little child, hear it for the first time. The good news is that your life, your future, your destiny is a gift you must receive and not invent. Years ago, when I first started the ministry, I met a woman in a retirement home, who requested baptism. My first question was whether she was baptized. She answered, Of course, and if you baptize me that will be 17 times. You may not realize that United Methodists do not affirm rebaptism. Much of the church throughout history does not affirm re-baptism. What is the reason for this? It all comes down to one question. When we celebrate a baptism, are we celebrating an act of humans or an act of God? Often a person might think, Well, I was baptized as child, but I don't remember it. I didn't choose it and it must not mean anything. What I told that woman is the counsel that theologians through the centuries have offered. Its' nothing new. I told her the fact you are concerned about this now shows God has been guiding you all along. It was a cause of great anxiety, burden, and stress in that woman's life to think that every important spiritual movement in her life was up to her. With every turn she encounters not rest, but more worry that now she has to reinvent the wheel. Anything important that happens is up to me, my choices, my decisions. What if your concern to get right with God, shows not what you came up with, but it's the realization of God's hand that is present all along? God was guiding Moses in that basket through all the twists and turns that brought that basket to the place of completion. This didn't cease when Moses arrived in that palace. What was true in that basket would remain true during those 40 years in the wilderness when it seemed the current was at a standstill. Don't judge by what is happening only on the surface. God is at work under the surface. Listen child and hear for the first time. We are praying for a hand to bless you and keep you. We are praying for a hand to direct you and guide you. We are praying for a hand to guard you and govern you. We are praying for a hand to defend you and empower you. We are praying for a hand to inspire and enable you long before you are capable of doing any of these things for yourself. We are praying for God to surround you with friends, family, and community that will teach, model, and demonstrate what it means to live with an eye for the marvelous. We are praying that your mind will become ingrained with a desire to consume the wonderful things only God can fulfill. We are praying that your attraction will gravitate toward the things in life that are toward hope, peace, and the prosperity that is eternal. We pray you know nothing just happens. 5
Of course there is grace for all people, but let's not fail to recognize there are either advantages or disadvantages that surround us in life. This is why believers are given a Great Commission. This is why Scripture doesn't hold back in describing the imperative we have to take the Gospel to the world. This is why we are commended to proclaim the Good News even at great threat to our own well being. In the end, God's ways will prevail. In the end, God's ways will triumph. In the end, the Pharaohs passed into oblivion. What they thought was so powerful is now nothing more than a footnote in a history book. At the time, it seemed that child in the basket was on the losing side. What the child needed more than anything else was for someone to speak truth into his ear, long before he was making decisions. The destiny we have is not fate, but God's. How wonderful that the name Moses received was given to him by that unnamed Pharaoh's Daughter. She gave him the name Moses. Long after he committed that crime and had to flee into the wilderness, where ever he went, he carried with him that defining identity. His name meant, One who was pulled from the water. He didn't give himself that name. He didn't steer himself along those currents. He didn't drive himself toward any destination. He was one who was guided in the water. To embrace a guided life is to embrace a restful life. It's medicine for the soul to realize that where we are at this moment is not a coincidence, or blind fate, or an impersonal force. Even the mistakes I've made God can channel toward purposes I could never give myself. Blind fate can't take bad things and turn them into good things, only a loving God can do that. By the time Jesus arrives on the scene, He will hold up a child and proclaim there's only way to enter into His kingdom. It's not through our own clever decision making. It's not through our own ingenuity. It's not through our own ability to pull ourselves up by own bootstraps. We must enter the kingdom with the heart of a child. Our call is to place our hearts in the basket. Let us receive the healing that comes through the relief of thinking everything is up to us. Help us to see the people, the places, the currents you have in my life right now that are guiding me toward completion. Help me to embrace me larger name as one who is guided on the water. Give us the grace to accept our guided life. Give us the grace to give witness to the guided life. Give us the grace to live joyfully with the realization nothing just happens. 6