Do you ever feel like you’re doing life against the grain, contrary to what’s expected or normal? I think we can sometimes struggle to remain true to our interior convictions when the world around us doesn’t always complement or support our beliefs. And we can find ourselves in a season or situation when we are at odds against our environs.
I think that Moses struggled to reconcile the world around him with his internal compass. Recently, I’ve been reading about Moses in the first few chapters of Exodus. In these chapters, God reveals Himself to Moses at the burning bush, after he had been herding sheep in the wilderness for forty years. During this conversation with Moses, God tells him to go to Egypt and liberate His people. God’s words run against the grain for Moses, as we can see from his part in this conversation.
In much of Moses’ reply to God, he disagrees with what God is telling him. He lets God know that the Israelites won’t believe him, that he has trouble with speaking, that he wants someone else to do this liberating work and he doesn’t want to take up God’s directive to him. At the end of this extensive conversation, Moses adjusts his thinking and agrees to make some initial steps to do what God is telling him.
When Moses shows up to tell the Israelite leaders about God’s words pertaining to their liberation, they struggle to believe what Moses is telling them because of the intense hardship of their work and Pharoah’s oppression. Furthermore, Pharoah is firmly opposed to letting the Israelites go to worship God when Moses confronts him about the Israelites. So, Moses goes against the grain with the Israelite leaders and Pharoah. But in doing that, he chooses to go in the groove with God.
We see that Moses goes against the grain with these individuals even though it’s difficult, uncomfortable and even contrary to all of the immediate human feedback. Lots of humans didn’t agree with Moses when he decided to follow God. I think it’s important to take some pause and think about Moses’ choices and consider our decisions, particularly when we have to weigh the importance of following God if there’s human opposition or discomfort. This is what we do when we go against the grain so that we can stay in the groove with God.
Are there some decisions or situations in your life where you need to choose to go against the grain so that you can stay in the groove with God? In order to answer this question, I suggest that you make some pause to reflect and have some quiet space to pray and dialogue with God. Maybe you’ll have your own burning bush experience in such a pause so that you can live in a better groove with God.
