Sitting on the gymnasium floor in junior high school after our class had finished a workout for almost 45 minutes, I began to imagine an ice cold 7UP, and how incredibly delicious that would taste at that moment. It was an image that I couldn’t shake, and I stopped listening to our gym teacher as I wallowed in the thought. I had never experienced such compelling thirst before.

In the Bible there are two occasions of intense thirst on the part of the Hebrew people that occur near the beginning, and again near the end of their forty year trek through the wilderness. They are moments that determined the very fate of Moses and his brother Aaron.

Soon after escaping Egypt’s Pharaoh through the red sea,the people found themselves without water and complained to Moses, who prayed to God for direction. The Lord told Moses to use his staff to strike the “rock of Horeb”, and that water would rush out of the rock. Moses followed God’s instructions in detail, striking the rock with the staff he had earlier used during the plagues in Egypt. Fresh water gushed out of the rock. (Exodus 17:5-6)

Almost forty years later, close to the Promised Land, again there was a water shortage, and a rock. Again the people complained to Moses. This time, though, God’s instructions were slightly different. He told Moses to carry his staff, and to “Speak to the rock.” Numbers 20:7)

Moses, instead of speaking to the rock, spoke to the people, then struck the rock as he had done all those years before: “Must we bring you water out of this rock?” he said to the people; and God told Moses that he and Aaron would not enter the Promised Land. It seems unimportant, a small variation on the Lord’s instructions, but Moses’ small change showed God a changed heart.

Many years later, the apostle John wrote God’s message to the church in Ephesus: “You have persevered and endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at the first. (Revelation 2:4)

All I did in that long ago gymnasium, was imagine a cold glass of 7UP, but it distracted me so much that I didn’t hear a word our instructor was saying at the end of the work-out. All Moses did was change the words and follow the former solution to a problem, and ignore the words God spoke to him. God finds our souls immeasurably precious to Him. Where we stand toward Him is more important than any other part of our lives. David, Moses’ spiritual descendant , would one day write, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” (Psalm 51:10) That was Moses’ real and only hope, and ours, too.

Love in Him,

Prue