Strange Reflections

Do you ever check yourself out in a car window? Or the display case of a shop as you pass by? Isn't this kind of a funny thing to do? To just look at yourself?

I was down in Southwest today. It's an "urban" residential living area at UMass Amherst. Where I was sitting there was a huge window that, because of the light, was acting as a two way mirror that afforded me an opportunity to observe the folks of southwest walking by.

I was sort of multi-tasking, people watching and preparing to lead a House Church on Exodus 13-16. What really struck me about this passage was how many times "LORD" or "God" is used. In Chapter 13, there are 22 verses, and 18 of those verses mention God or LORD. God is totally, absolutely involved in the lives of Moses and Aaron and the Israelites. God is bringing and speaking and using his hands and relating with people. At this point in time, I'm not sure how human you can say God is being, but he is present in the lives of people and acting/intersecting in their lives.

Girls walk by. The first thing they do, almost always, as long as they are close enough to the window, is catch a quick glimpse. Some of the guys do it too, but mostly the girls. Why is this? And most of the time they weren't checking for snot or fixing their hair, but just simply looking at themselves. Some, a quick glance, others a long, drawn out, on-the-move stare. What are they thinking about as they look? The few guys who did it, surprisingly, looked like really tough guys and would get a big drink of themselves in the reflection.

I'm just guessing here, but could it be that people are concerned with their image?

In Exodus 15, Moses sings a song in response to all the things God has done for them, how he has interacted in their lives. It's beautiful and violent and poetic and it's a lot about who God is and how we respond to this God who is involved in human life. And maybe this is a stretch, but could it be that if we became more concerned with who God is, what he is doing in our lives, and how we respond to that God, then our image would become more clear and we wouldn't be as concerned with it? Perhaps we would look more like the image of God.

At the end of Exodus 14, the Israelites "...believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses." It seems they are seeing more clearly who Moses is because of God. This is very different from when the two quarreling Hebrews mock him and don't recognize him as a Hebrew right after Moses decided to identify with them. But now, they believe in him, because God has raised him up.

I think we sometimes try to get a glimpse of God too, as we are walking through this earth, but God can be really blurry. Ultimately though, God has intersected into our lives through the person (the actual factual historical person) of Jesus. I think when we come face to face with the crucified Jesus, we see a reflection of ourselves. That's us, bloody, beat up, full of sin, and dying. And when we confess this Jesus, that he died in our place and was raised from the dead, we can clearly see God and ourselves, the image of God that he created us to be- our new resurrected selves.