Hanging Out with Moses

Deut 3:23-28
At that time, too, I entreated the Lord, saying: "O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your might; what god in heaven or on earth can perform deeds and mighty acts like yours! Let me cross over to see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and the Lebanon." But the Lord was angry with me on your account and would not heed me. The Lord said to me, "Enough from you! Never speak to me of this matter again! Go up to the top of Pisgah and look around you to the west, to the north, to the south, and to the east. Look well, for you shall not cross over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, because it is he who shall cross over at the head of this people and who shall secure their possession of the land that you will see."

[TQ]
Love! God loves me. Father God loves me. Not too long ago, I learned something very new and profound to me. But I'll go back further in time, before my "not too long ago". When I read the bible, especially the Prophets, I never really enjoyed it. It hurt to read it. It hurt me to read about God's hatred for mankind. I used the term "hatred" intentionally because that's exactly what I thought, or, more accurately, what I felt. Man made God angry; God hated Man. Therefore, He sought to destroy him. Man did something wrong to make God angry. God was seeking punishment on His people time and time again. It was depressing and disappointing. He's supposed to love Man. He's supposed to love us. He's supposed to love me. "God, what did I do wrong that You would hate me so much?" Like I said, it hurt to read the books of the prophets.

It was reiterated too much to me the "truth" or "fact" that God hated me...no matter what wrong I did. He would only "like" me if I did the right thing. However, the Psalms were easy to read. David used fun language. He emoted feeling from himself. He was completely honest. I could handle that. He loved the Lord. He doubted Him. He asked for revenge on his enemies. David gave us all the permission to be honest with God. But could God be honest to me? Did I want to hear what God had to say to me? I don't think I did.

Still, if it weren't for what I recently learned, I wouldn't want to hear what He thought of me. I wouldn't have had the heart to take it. My heart heard the negative things said out of hate, out of resentment, out of disappointment, out of worthlessness. I read the prophets out of my identification with my own worthlessness, resentment, disappointment, and hatred. I didn't read the prophets out of the sense of love. And that's what I recently learned. I learned to read everything from God's living word out of LOVE.

Love! I read everything that come from the hands of God's chosen penmen knowing that my Father in heaven still and always loves me. I tended to read passages like Deut. 34:1-4 and Ps. 90 out a sense that God hated Moses and was punishing him. And this was because I was projecting onto Moses what I thought God thought about me. But if I read now, KNOWING that God loved Moses, it's completely different. Imagine, with the eyes of your heart, Moses receiving the words that he will not be going into the promised land. He knew it was His fault. He provoked God to anger. He was being punished. He had to suffer the consequences of his sinful reaction to others. He may have been grieving the incredible loss, but he found, at the same moment, that God still loved Him. And that's all he needed. That's all I need.

I have done very bad things through the course of my life, and I may be facing the consequences of my poor choices, but nothing...NOTHING...lessens God's intense love for me. And this means the same for all of us, together in this cyber community. God loves us. FATHER God loves us. I learned that I viewed God by what I had experienced from other significant persons in my life. Enough experiences proved more to me that God hated me and deemed me worthless when I did something wrong. However, through His true body, I am literally discovering a Father who loves me, still, even after I've done, what I've thought to be the worst sin ever committed.

So, I imagine Moses up on Mount Nebo with God, hanging out. He learns that He will not be able to go into the promised land, instead he gets to be with his heaven Father for the rest of his life, mortal and eternal. We see Moses with our Living Heavenly Father when Jesus was transfigured. We know that he was with God. I'll bet when Moses had finally calmed down and was quiet before God, he didn't care if he got into the promised land. His Father's love was enough...more than enough. May we all experience the Father's love more than enough here on earth, to taste the eternal in our mortal bodies, to know that "God loves you" is more than just words but a profound experience given to all who are quiet enough to receive it.

[BT]
Words cannot express my appreciation/thankfulness for these meditation emails, which I read, print out, and save for re-reading during my "searching out" times. Subsequently, TQ's writings have also spoken to me on a level I cannot express in words.

To preface what I want to say, I must tell you that TQ was in my new member class, and from that time forward I expected great things from him, because I "saw" this in him! I, however, did not foresee the depth of this young man.....his singing voice is remarkable, which was something I had not anticipated, but I just knew this young man was going to leave an imprint on lives at Colonial!

I read his writing "Hanging Out with Moses" and am amazed at the insight and depth he writes with. His writing touched me, personally, in a profound way because I, too, have had years of committing sins that affected my life....in a negative way.......until I was able to see that God's love surpasses any mortal man's understanding.

Moses, to me, had always been a biblical character I revered, and never gave a thought to his humanness......until these meditative emails. Saturday evening's "Light of Incarnation" meeting opened me up, and then reading the writing about Moses by TQ clearly showed the importance of being able to "relate" to biblical characters.

God's unconditional love is so hard to KNOW, when I cannot "feel" it, nor "see" it at a given time. Thanks to these heartfelt meditations..........it does become more clear to me.

[JF]
Lord, thank you for bringing us to your Word and revealing its Truth to us. Continue your work in all our hearts to heal the wounds of our pasts. As we pray each morning, fill our hearts with your Holy Love so that we may start our days filled to overflowing with the joy that comes from knowing you. Bring us ever closer to knowing your Love, as Moses did as he sat there on Mount Nebo watching the sun set on his life, softly stroking his old grey beard, crossing that thin line between here and an eternity drenched in your Love. Amen.

 
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