After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. And the Lord did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said. Exodus 8:12-15
Many years ago I worked as a part-time hospital chaplain as well as serving my own church. It could be a draining as well as a rewarding task. I did my best, though I fear it wasn’t very good.
But from time to time people would assure me that when their bad time was over they would start taking God seriously: as if to say, “This has taught me a lesson – I have been really neglectful of God, and I know I must change”. Occasionally they would ask me what church I was minister of – “If I get through this I’ll be coming along!”
Well, I worked for eleven years in that hospital, and that did happen… precisely once. A lady who had been in for quite a time recovered, and was as good as her word. I had the pleasure of baptising her, and she became a loyal church member.
True, there were others who may, for all I know, have changed their ways and joined some other church: but I have to confess that I became a little cynical.
How true this is to human nature. If you have ever made a promise to God in a time of trouble and then gone back on it (as I certainly have) you are, I’m afraid, in good company (if good is the right word).
That company includes Pharaoh, King of Egypt in the days of Moses.
Some 1500 hundred years before Christ, God sent Moses and his older brother Aaron to lead the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. But Pharaoh was stubborn: in some places we read that “God hardened his heart”, in others that he hardened his own heart. However we may explain that difference, he comes across as being responsible for his own disastrous decisions.
The particularly sad part is when he seems genuinely to have undergone a change of heart – only then to go back on it. This happens several times in Exodus 7-11, and 8:15 is a prime example: “When Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said”. The key words there are “when Pharaoh saw there was relief”; as soon as things started to get a bit better, Pharaoh’s good resolution melted away like snow in the sunshine.
Are we today any different? I don’t want to draw too close a parallel between what happened all those hundreds of years ago and our present pandemic situation. And yet I can’t help seeing this as a warning to us.
Everyone is in agreement that we are living through very difficult times, and we may have heard people say things like, “Of course I dislike it as much as anyone and long for it to be over – and yet I feel that I have learned important lessons. I really hope – indeed, I intend – to be a better person when we have emerged on the other side”.
Ah, but will we?
What lessons in particular might we learn? I suggest three.
First, the value of human togetherness and compassion.
Have you noticed how people often seem to be more friendly and sympathetic? Even if you happen to be passing a total stranger in the street, it’s striking how often you get a smile and a greeting. Oh yes, there are, sadly, others who it brings the worst out of; but every time we experience that touch of shared humanity it does us good and can prompt the question, “Why can’t we be like this all the time?” And that’s a good question to ask.
Second, the shallowness of material things.
One of the tragedies of modern life, especially in the affluent west, is that we have come to measure meaning and happiness in purely material terms. Suddenly these things are either taken away completely, or much reduced, and we find ourselves bored and frustrated, even cross that we can’t do the things we think we’re entitled to do.
And then we see those members of society, especially of course the health workers and other key workers, who simply battle on at enormous sacrifice and teach us about the things that really matter.
Third, the fact of our own mortality.
Suddenly, people have been dying in shocking numbers. And of course we find it hard to cope with it.
We have been used to brushing death under the carpet, pretending to ourselves that it isn’t really there. But we can’t do that any more – not, at least, if we have any sense at all.
Death beckons us all, and we had better get used to the idea. I for one have found myself praying that God will bring me to the place where I really can genuinely echo those wonderful, glowing words of Paul: “To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
Life, even at its best, is often “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. So wrote the gloomy philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
But there is hope in Christ, the one who conquered death and lives eternally. May God help us, through these difficult times, to learn that hope. And not to make the same sad mistake as Pharaoh so long ago.
Father, thank you that in Jesus death is a defeated enemy. As I am forced to look it in its face perhaps as never before, please bring me to that place where I can say with Paul “to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” - and really mean it, from the bottom of my heart. Amen.
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