As a teenager, I was greatly influenced (and still am) by the songs and writings of the late, great Keith Green, who was tragically killed in a plane crash in 1982 along with 2 of his young children, he was just 28 years old! The reason I mention this is because as I've been thinking and preparing this blog, I've had the title track of his 3rd album buzzing around in my head - So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt. The first verse says:
So you wanna go back to Egypt
Where it's warm and secure
Are you sorry you bought the one way ticket
When you thought you were sure
You wanted to live in the land of promise
But now it's getting so hard
Are you sorry you're out here in the desert
Instead of your own back yard
The whole song, like a lot of Keith's lyrics, is tongue in cheek and jovial, but behind the witty lyrics it really packs a punch!
In the situation we find ourselves in, with it now being a whole year since we announced to the world that we were leaving ngm to found a home that would be a place of rest and relaxation for ministers and church workers who were in need of a break, it is so easy to look back to the past! Why is it, that whenever we look back at the past, we always seem to view everything with rose tinted spectacles and remember the 'good old days'? In writing this, I'm not suggesting that we didn't love our time with ngm, it was a time when we learnt so much and matured in our faith; or even referring to the years of service we had at Bewdley Baptist Church, but rather that it's easy to forget the definite callings we had to leave and to move on to something new.
Too often in life, when faced with adversity and discouragement, the temptation is to look back to the security of what you knew in the past, back to a time where it was predictable and secure. As Moses found, when leading the Israelites through the wilderness, the people complained about everything, constantly moaning that at least back in Egypt that they were 'safe and secure', they had food, they had jobs, somewhere to live etc forgetting that in Egypt they were actually slaves! They managed to gloss over and forget the reality that back in Egypt, Pharaoh had them making bricks and that he was constantly making the task more and more difficult for them, while maintaining the high quota levels that he had set for them to make. They had forgotten that the slave masters used to beat and abuse them, so much so, that the young Moses ended up killing one of the slave masters! They also seemed to have forgotten that God was constantly with them, leading them both by day and by night, and that he provided for their every need.
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