Daily Thought for Thursday 6th March 2025
“So the taskmasters and the supervisors of the people went out and said to the people, ‘Thus says Pharaoh …’”
Exodus 5:10 (NRSV)
Let my people go
Fiona Burnett
Growing up on the family farm, most weekends at this time of year involved straw. Whether it was shaking out fresh bedding for the calves in their nursery area or ensuring the heavily pregnant ewes had a dry bed to lie on, straw was involved. If the harvest in the autumn had been a good one, straw was in plentiful supply and easy to shake out. But if the harvest had been a wet one, straw was in short supply, stuck together and hard work to make a bed from. But it was always there in the barn waiting to be used.
How much more difficult would the job have been if we had had to go and gather it first? Which is just what the Israelites in this story were faced with. And why? Because they dared to ask to be freed from their slavery.
The Israelites were being badly treated in Egypt and cried out to God for help. Moses was the answer to their prayer: he confronted Pharaoh but seemed to make the plight of the Israelites worse. And what did the people do? They turned on Moses and Aaron and blamed them for their predicament, not the Pharoah who was the oppressor and the source of their woes! Moses, who was a reluctant prophet (at least at the beginning of his work) must have felt discouraged – to put it mildly – but persevered through so many setbacks.
“Let my people go” was his mantra and eventually the Pharoah had to agree. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Whether the “harvest” has been an easy or difficult one, we have to work with what we have, to keep going, to persevere when things get tricky, to make the “bricks” that shape our lives. To have faith that God is with us every step of the way.
Shall we pray?:
God of liberation, when the shadows draw nearer, with fear within and hostility without, keep our courage high as we seek to spread your just and timely word of liberation to the captives. Amen.
Dr Fiona Burnett is Convener of the Presbytery of Lothian & Borders Mission Committee.