“During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” Exodus 2: 23-25
“God doesn’t always operate on our time frame, but He’s always on time,” Roots author, Alex Haley, quotes his grandmother on that. Can you relate to the frustration of waiting? Waiting on a promotion, a relationship, financial stability – we’ve all walked through seasons of waiting, when it just didn’t feel like God was paying attention.
Moses and the people of Israel certainly understood. Over 400 years they had been in Egypt, but it wasn’t until that very moment that God chose to act. And who would God call to lead the people into freedom? None other than Moses, the disgraced adopted grandson of Pharaoh, who in his fall from privilege had spent the past 40 years looking after a flock of sheep in the desert. This doesn’t sound quite like the timeline or leader I would have chosen. But God had used those past 40 years in the wilderness to prepare Moses for that very moment. God had not forgotten Moses or His people. He was right on time.
If you’re walking through a wilderness season in your life, it’s easy to feel forgotten by God. What’s the point of it all, you might wonder? We might even grow nostalgic about how great life was in the past, compared to the challenges we’re facing today. But what we see through the life of Moses is that God does not forgot, get distracted, or ignore us. Just like God remembered His promises to the people of Israel, God remembers you. He has not and will never forget you in your wilderness season. So, the question we must ask ourselves is, will we trust Him? Will we lean into Him when it doesn’t make sense? Because God’s timing might not be OUR timing – but God is always on time.
