Press the arrow to listen to Mercy Me sing “God With Us” as you read today’s devotion about the presence of God.

Scripture

“I have been a foreigner in a foreign land.” Exodus 2:22

Observation

Moses had a rootless life. He started by floating in a river. Then he lived as an adopted child in a strange home. He was exiled as a fugitive in the desert. He led the people for 40 years through wilderness. In the end he did not touch the Holy Land.

Yet for all the drifting Moses experienced, we see him as a foundational figure. I perceive Moses somewhere between the Charlton Heston-esque silhouette and the marble statue of Moses carved by Michelangelo.

What has made Moses so resolute in our memory, though he was a fugitive and nomad? Moses knew how to find God in strange places. That was his secret. At the edge of an ocean with an army behind him, in desert wastes or at bitter waters, Moses had the capacity to find the Lord anywhere.

Application
There is no comfort in being a foreigner in a foreign land. Everything is strange. Though one may live in a culture for decades, there are always unspoken rules of society never known until broken. There are no memory-drenched places where we once met with God and where he might show up again. New places have a hollow, lonely echo. But after the burning bush, everything changed for Moses. He was able from that point on to find God anywhere. So too must eye. Life has many scrolling panoramas that cannot be rewound. In the unfamiliar I must find the familiar one.

Prayer
Father, like Moses, help me to find you everywhere I am because you are anywhere I can be. Amen.