Introductions

This weekend I read Exodus (I'm reading the Bible in 90 days this summer with a group of amazing people - there's still time to join us and not be a bit behind!).  I love the story of The LORD and Moses.  Before ritual sacrifice, before the cross, before atonement, before all the things we expect must take place before we are permitted to approach God, the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as with a friend.  It's basically one of the most amazing relationship concepts I have ever encountered: A Holy All-Powerful God claiming the BFF position of an exiled, sheep-herding, stuttering murderer.  But before Moses got all glow-y and before he carried the law of God on his shoulders (literally and figuratively), before all of that, there were the introductions. Moses really had no need to introduce himself to his Creator, so his part was skipped over entirely. And how does the Almighty, Creator of time, the universe and all that both of those things in all their vastness contain, the Beginning and the End, the Everlasting, Holy, Omniscient, Jehovah introduce Himself?

I Am.

Two of the smallest words in the human language; two of the most incomprehensible concepts the mind can entertain.

You need it? I Am.

You want it? I Am.

You don't know you need it yet?  I Am that too.

You can't understand it and couldn't put words to it if you wanted to? I Am.

I Am all the things for all the people in all of time; I am the center of the universe, the wellspring of life, the author of salvation, the source of everything good and, yes, evil.  

I Am the Healer, the Breaker, the Bringer of blessings and curses, the Creator, the Destroyer. 

I Am life and death and every single breath in between the two.

I am here and there and all places, filling time up like water fills a sphere, filling the earth up like a King fills His coffers, filling you up like a Spirit fills the empty spaces.

I AM

How Moses even survives the introduction without burning to cinder is beyond me ( in fact, his survival was pretty precarious through a good portion of this initial blind date) because implied in this new revelation of God, the great I Am, is the unspoken sentiment that Moses is very, very not.

Which is true, because he isn't.  From Pharaoh-in-Waiting to a dirty desert nomad doesn't even begin to span the distance that stands now between him and I Am.

The same distance, maybe a little less, than stands between me and the very same God.

He Is and I?  I am most certainly not. Anything really. Despite my seeming opulence when compared with Moses' lifestyle, despite society having come so far, and most of us being so very churched, and our clean kitchens and our safe children's activities....despite all of that.  We may as well just be dirty, wandering murderers in a dry and barren land.

For so we are.

Here's where it gets good though.  Moses and I, we're humans cut from the same cloth: bumbling, stuttering, impatient, murdering, disobedient excuse-makers who just so happened to be chosen, not because of anything at all that we brought to the table, but chosen none-the-less to shine.

God met Moses at the burning bush and told Him who He Is with two simple words.  The next few chapters of conversation will be used to tell Moses who he is and what he was created to do with no little protest from Moses.

Two words made very, completely clear that God was more than able to handle this situation entirely on his own, but the next four books of the Bible will tell the story of how He enlisted the person of Moses to make it happen, and in the midst of this, developed one of the greatest friendships in recorded history: a man and His God. A man who let I AM have the final say in who he was.

I better take my shoes off.  I think I feel an introduction coming on...