Wisdom 19:6-12. An awestruck recap of the Exodus. Solomon wonders at how God had dry land emerge from where water had been, how a grassy plain emerged from the raging waves for God's children to make their escape. "For the whole creation in its nature was fashioned anew, complying with thy commands, that thy children might be kept unharmed." The people rejoiced as they were let out of Egypt, leaping like lambs and praising God, their deliverer. They remembered how in Egypt the earth had brought forth gnats rather than animals, and the river brought forth frogs rather than fish. But upon their deliverance, when they asked for luxurious food, quails came up from the sea for them to eat.

With everything going on in the world right now, all the lies, and the way the truth is being spun or hidden, there is growing unease in our hearts and our souls. I see it and feel it everywhere and in everyone. I feel it myself, and when I add it to the messages I keep getting about bad times coming, I think (as I may have mentioned) "How long, O Lord?", just as the Israelites must have thought during their 400 years as slaves in Egypt (God's time is really not our time!). Things got much worse in Egypt leading up to the Exodus, they had to for Pharaoh to agree to let the Israelites go. But everyone suffered through those times - the everyday Egyptian and the everyday Jew - they all felt that fear, anxiety, hunger, and panic. That is, I think, what is happening to us right now, or at least the beginning stages of it - we are all feeling the effects of the bad things that God is permitting (which really are the effects of the bad things we have done)!  There is a reason for them - it is to call us all home to him - to get us ready to turn back to God - and I see more and more people coming to this realization - that God is the answer to all of this.

So we must hang on, and live through these challenges - enduring them, loving others, and giving others the time to turn back to God. It will happen. He loves us and will not abandon us! And the joy we will feel when we are delivered will be so great precisely because the suffering we have been through is so dire.

The first lines of this reading are "For the whole creation and its nature was fashioned anew, complying with thy commands, that thy children might be kept unharmed." It is reminiscent of creation - the world coming to be at his Word and all of creation complying with his commands - dry land emerging from water, animals being created and put under our dominion. But it also reminds us that when things get too bad, when we, with our lies and disobedience, are trying to cause reality - the world itself - to not comply with his commands, then he will step in and recreate our world, so that his children will remain unharmed. 

We don't know when he will do this, but we know that he will - he has shown us again and again. Lies can never defeat truth, but they do create a kind of hell here on earth, and that has a devastating effect on us and the world while they are holding sway. Right now, they are holding sway, all over the world, and hell is being created, we all feel it. But do not worry - the Truth is a person, he has saved us and will do so again. Have faith!

"You see evil growing instead of weakening? Do not worry." (The Novena of Surrender Day 4)