“”Didn’t we tell you the same thing in Egypt? ‘Leave us alone! Let us work for the Egyptians!’ It would have been better for us to work for the Egyptians than to die in the desert.”” – Exodus 14:12 (CEB)
Read that slowly. These are people who were slaves, who groaned under it for generations. And here, only days into freedom, with water ahead and an army behind, they ask to go back.
It is easy to hear weakness there. It is not. Bondage at least had a shape. You knew what every day would ask of you and what it would cost. Freedom is unmarked country, and the desert ahead looked a great deal like dying. Familiar suffering can feel safer than unfamiliar hope, and often does.
Most of us know something about that. Some old captivity still calls, not because it was ever good, but because we knew its rules and had learned to survive them. What is ahead asks for a trust we are not sure we have yet.
What old captivity still looks safer to you than freedom?
God, when I reach back toward what held me, hold on tighter. Remind me you did not bring me out here to leave me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.