Daily Meditation: “In The Breach”

SCRIPTURE

So God said he would destroy them – had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach to keep God’s wrath from destroying them. - Psalm 106:23

REFLECTION:

Poor Moses. He’s had a rough life, and it’s not getting any easier. His life had some incredible changes, and by the time we get to this part of the story remembered in Psalm 106, he had gone from royalty to captive, an outsider to a prophet, endured the horrors of the ten plagues, rescued his people from bondage in Egypt, parted the Red Sea to save them from certain death and led them into the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land.

On the way, though, his people complain, lose patience, lose hope, lose faith, and worship false idols. They even begin to think that their lives of bondage in Egypt were better than their present circumstance in the wilderness. While Moses is up on Mt. Sinai, he learns that God’s own patience for all of this has run thin and God is going to destroy the people of Israel.

Poor Moses...he just can’t catch a break between an impatient people and a frustrated God. Yet, there he is, caught between the two in the breach.

And that is where he stands on behalf of his people in order to keep them from being destroyed. This is one of the most difficult lessons to learn as people of faith: that sometimes the people that most frustrate and anger us are also the people we must stand and advocate for.

In our current times of such rampant divisiveness and polarization, it may seem a fool’s errand to even consider such a thing. And yet, like Moses, sometimes we are called to stand in the breach between forces that seek to destroy us and advocate for those that most frustrate and challenge us so we might bring peace and the hope that someday we’ll get out of the wilderness and finally into the Promised Land that awaits us.

PRAYER

Challenging God, in those moments when we find ourselves in the breach grant us wisdom to be your healing presence in order to bring restoration and healing to a hurting world.

Amen.

Peace,

Shawn