An Awesome God

In today's first reading, Ex 17: 37, the Israelites are out in the desert and have no water. They complain to Moses: "Why did you take us out of Egypt to die out here in the desert. We have no water."  Moses intercedes for them and is told to take his staff, the one he stretched out over the Red Sea, and strike the rock. Water will flow.

What an awesome, caring, loving God. In my prayer, I said to the Lord:  Lord, I thirst  and You bring forth water from the rock, from the most unlikely places in my life.  The soil  of my heart is not just hard. Sometimes it seems as though it has turned into a rock.  You instruct Moses, and you instruct me, to take the staff that Moses stretched over the Red Sea (for us Christians, that was stretched out on the cross on Calvary), saving the people from the pursuit of the Egyptians (for us, the pursuit of Satan) and touch the rock/Rock.  'I am there,' you instruct Moses, 'standing ...in front of you on the rock in Horeb.  Strike the rock, and water will flow from it...' You  tell me that I will not die but live from the water of grace that flows at my bidding.  "Know", You say to me,  "that I am always 'standing in front of you on the rock' of your faith. I always know where you will find water as you wander in the desert of your life.Ask me and your thirst will be quenched with Living Water flowing from my side."

"Lord," I said, "I'm thinking of those hauled off to be part of slave labor camps/factories, sex brothels and hotels where young girls have been transported to be used by human traffickers, sexual predators, and/or pimps to increase their bank accounts. Why, in the words of today's first reading, did you ever allow young girls to be taken from "Egypt"?  Hear their anguished cries. Listen to their night sobbings, their agony at being deceived into thinking that  they were being rescued from their poverty and taken to a better place, a "land flowing with  milk and honey," to the "Promised Land," where they could make enough money to help out their families back home from dying of starvation or wallowing in desperate poverty. Lord, send a "Moses" to save them, I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen."