May 4, 2012

Mañana Mr. Frog, Mañana



The kids were watching (I watched too) The Prince of Egypt the other day and when the scenes with the plagues started I began to think about something I'd previously read in Exodus where Pharaoh said the most peculiar thing. 

The second of the Ten Plagues is the “Plague of the Frogs”… which sounds like a 70’s b-movie or something to me.  If you read the account in Exodus 8, you’ll see that God was serious about this smiting thing- the frogs would come from the river, they would swarm and get into everything including ovens and kneading bowls, it had to have been intense.  The noise alone would have driven me insane. 

I can imagine Pharaoh’s wife coming to him and demanding that he take care of this frog epidemic that eclipsed their once serine land.  She was not OK that her servants were so preoccupied by these slimy little amphibians and the thought of those dirty little creatures being anywhere near her food so disgusted her royal standards. 

Whether it was his wife, his own motivations, Pharaoh had to go talk to Moses and Aaron about fixing it and he did.  He asked them to “Plead with the Lord to take away the frogs from me and from my people…” Moses basically responded with “I’d be happy to, when do you want them gone?” and this is where Pharaoh said the strangest thing imaginable.   He responded with ‘Tomorrow”.  You can read it here, it’s crazy. 

I’ve read this story in Exodus a couple of times and I always pause right there and re-read Pharaoh’s response.  Really?  Tomorrow? Was he waiting to see if the French would come down and make something with the frog legs (I know, wrong era but humor me here)? Did he forget how upset his wife is?  Guess he never heard that if momma ain’t happy, no one is happy.  But seriously, did he really just say ‘tomorrow’?  Enough frogs came out of the river to cover the land and get into everything!  This guy goes to the two people he knows that can change the situation quickly, begging them to talk to God about it and when they give him the option of when does he want the whole thing fixed and he puts it off another day? 

Why would Moses and Aaron need to ‘plead with the Lord’ if this was something that could be put off till mañana? 

Then I started to think about things that I ‘plead with the Lord’ on, and that too many times I’m willing to put the solution to my dilemma off for another time.  I’m so glad that God isn’t smiting things too much anymore but really, if I have something going on that has me pleading, you would think I would prioritize it when I’m pleading with the Creator of the Universe as far as when I want the situation resolved. 

I think the issue is that in the solution there is often sacrifice on our end.  It would be easy to read through Exodus and say that Pharaoh must have been an idiot, that all he had to do was let Moses an his people go.  But it isn’t that easy, by doing that Egypt would be giving up a huge labor force and if you read about ancient Egypt, they were happy to have others, like their Hebrew slaves, do the hard labor and live a life of great luxury.  There was also the whole pride thing; Pharaoh was a God King, part of a line of these great God Kings who were the most awesome people in the world ever, so he had been taught.  Now he had to basically bow to the invisible god of an outcast who was raised in Pharaoh’s house but was really a Hebrew?  I’m guessing that humility wasn’t high on the list of character traits for the Kings of the Nile and the idea that there was someone, something greater than he was just plain insulting.  

I think that so many times I’m not too different from Pharaoh in this story, when I plead with God and ask him to fix a situation.  When God responds with the ‘when’ for the fix and I realize that the fix is going to require some work on my end, some humility from me & that I’m not able to order God around like my own personal executive assistant I back off a little and am ok living with the plague of the frogs for another night or two or longer, you really get used to the noise, and the smell... 
So it comes down to this- live with the issues that plague us or roll up our sleeves and take an active role in doing what we need to and deal with it.  Sure some of it will require sacrifice on our part, it may take some really hard work, humility, patience, perseverance, grace, forgiveness, love… but it has to be better than the ongoing cycle of pleading that God fixes our situation and we just find ourselves dealing with the same thing tomorrow. 

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