It’s ironic!  We work hard to achieve a state of stability and security in our lives, but then the Lord comes along and shakes things up. 

But good things can come from such a shake!

Consider our cruise for instance.  My wife and I have done only one cruise in our almost 50 years of marriage.   It was expensive, but I found a way to help defray the fare.

As we strolled the deck, we passed by the casino.  No, I didn’t gamble, but I noticed an arcade machine – the one where you drop a quarter in, it falls onto a moving bed of quarters and hopefully pushes a few of them off the cliff and into your pocket.   They call them “coin pushers.”

I thought to myself, “Hey I bet some of those quarters randomly drop off due to the movement of the boat and the engine vibrations.”  So, I probed the slot and sure enough there was 2 quarters there. 

I decided check on it throughout the voyage and I became $12.00 richer by the end of the trip.  All that shakin’ helped me bring home the bacon.   

Good things can come from such a shake!

This is certainly true in the spiritual realm. Abraham came to faith in God and then passed it down to Isaac and then to Jacob.   

Jacob’s 12 sons then took up residence in the foreign land of Egypt.  They found favor there for many years.  But as time marched on, they were marginalized and then enslaved. 

And their faith suffered over time.  The truth had not yet been written down so everything they knew of God came by word of mouth.  There was not a special day to gather or a place to worship.  The law had not yet been revealed nor were there priests to teach them.  Their faith consisted of ancient oral traditions traded around a campfire. 

They became comfortable in their slavish routines.   Life wasn’t pleasant, but they knew what they would be doing each day and what they would eat.  They had a place to live and family around them.  It was stable.

Then God decided He needed to shake things up.  He planned to relocate them to the promised land. 

But it was complicated.  Pharaoh resented the plan and made their lives miserable.  He supplied them with fewer materials yet demanded more bricks to be made.  They were not happy with God’s shaking.

Once they were released from Egypt, Pharaoh’s army pursued them with lethal intent.  The people cried.  “Isn’t this what we told you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians, because it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’”  – Ex 14:12. They desperately missed the comfort of their rut.

They were mentally, emotionally, and spiritually stuck in the past and they resented the difficulty that change brought.

But then God opened the Red Sea and allowed them to pass through on dry land.   When the forces of Pharaoh pursued them, God allowed the walls of water to fall and swallow them. 

Safe and sound on the other side, the rescued composed a song to celebrate. They sang, “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”  They were saved from certain death, and they knew it. 

The song went on, “This is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”  – Exodus 15:2  This God of dusty empty tradition, had now become God of their experience.  Their faith which had been built on the worn stories of their forefathers had become real to them and they wrote a joyful song to tell of it. 

Sounds like they were glad in the end that God did some shakin? 

Are you feeling some vibrations these days.  It’s OK!  The Lord’s just prepping you for something better.

A PRAYER: Lord feel free to uproot me when I get in a rut.

This has been Jim Johnson and pickleheavenpress.com

May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you

Scripture passages are from the NETBible ®