A great twist on the deliverance story of the Israelites from the Egyptians (more from Peterson). He suggests that the 10 plagues were not so much about judgment on Egypt but an exposing of the lie of Egypt's sovereignty for the Israelites.
They had only known captivity - and the best thing they could ever imagine was the best of Egypt... God had to rip the facade off and expose Egypt as a fraud - empty, lacking and powerless in order to allow them to dream of another kind of world.
It led me to think about what Gunilla Eckberg (Swede who helped form Sweden's laws around gender and trafficking) says are the keys to changing a nation:
The First? to imagine a different world.
This is what God is having to do again, and again for His people. Sometimes the only dreams we can image are the droning screen flickers of a godless world (a new kind of power)... so we say, "imagine having a flat screen TV or a lot of money - or a great job (which means a lot of money) and a nice house and two cars (really, nice new ones)" AND we lack Divine imagination... sometimes the only way to be free from them (fake dreams) is to expose them for the sham that they are... those lives are empty and lack imagination... I'm asking God to keep lifting my eyes to a new world - a better world... I want to be able to imagine a world where women don't have to sell their bodies for bread, children have enough to eat - and evil men are stopped in their tracks by just laws and nations who uphold them. I'm dreaming, with my eyes open- and pray that God would continue to expose the enemies fake world so that God can invite us to journey into a new, promise land... it's a deliverance that includes a wrenching of all that is of Egypt in me... do it Lord.
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This reminded me of a passage in 'Can you hear me?' and the Listening Prayer, mercy and Justice chapter that hit me like a tonne of bricks recently. My personality is one of the 'glass half empty'...an area that God continues to challenge me on - to keep dreaming of a better way....so I thought i would share:
"While the prophets heard and delivered scathing (though tearful) critiques of both individuals and society, what set them apart from the fashionable cynicism of our age what thier message of peace and hope. If you examine the fruit, the cynic is a thief of hope. The prophets on the other hand, could be brutally satirical yet somehow they also proclaimed good news. When they sound most despairing, suddenly they drop on us a vision of God's redemptive plan...
History is not a blind alley, and guilt is not an abyss. There is always a way that leads out of guilt: repentance, or turning to God. The prophet is a person who, living in dismay, has the power to transcent his dismay. Over all the darkness of experience hovers a vision of a different day."
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