The other day I was reading the third chapter of Exodus, and I thought… Moses would have been perfectly happy with our recent social distancing! God wants to send Moses back to crowded Egypt to free the Israelites and Moses wants no part of it! But God persists. Eventually Moses gives in, takes his brother Aaron and the showdown between Pharaoh and God begins.

As the story goes, it takes a multitude of plagues and another four-plus chapters in Holy Scripture before the Israelites are freed, only to wander in the desert for forty years! Their problems continue, but their life is different now. Now they are under the umbrella of a loving God who is simply testing them in order to bring them to a better place, a place where they can worship God freely and thankfully.

What we’ve been through in the last eighteen months was surely a test of our faith, trusting that our God would bring us through, yet again, and return life to normal. But what is normal? I read somewhere that as we return to normal, we may want to consider which parts of “normal” are worth rushing back to. Something to think about…

Like Moses, God has tasks for us to do, and whatever the task, he will equip us with what we need to accomplish His Will. The time of social distancing is over. What is it that the Lord is asking you to accomplish today?

About the author:
Previously the priest at St. Francis of Assisi in Lake Placid for 21 years, Rev. Elizabeth L. Nelson is now the Priest at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in LaBelle.