When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” – Exodus 32:1 NIV
As I drove to the White Mountains, I thought about Moses meeting with God on Mount Sinai. On the mountaintop Moses talked with God. He received the law. He received instructions and guidance for his people. Meanwhile his people waited at the foot of the mountain for Moses’ return. You could say they waited impatiently.
They worshipped a golden calf. You could say they worshipped a false idol, a cheap substitute. You could say they abandoned the God who brought them out of their bondage.
It is so easy to read this story and judge such a short-sighted and faithless people. But if the Bible guides us, it also shows us the patterns we stumble into, time and time again. It is hard to believe the nation of Israel forgot God so soon after their deliverance. But it is easy to believe that they put God in a box of their own narrow understanding.
We have struggled with understanding God, so vast, so surprising, showing up in ways so unexpectedly. He shows up in the book of Genesis to grace a barren and elderly woman with a son then shows up again to demand that son as a sacrifice. He shows up to Jacob, a trickster, and tells him of his many sons, then loses one until famine strikes the land. God remains faithful to a covenant promise while fathers and sons twist their lineage in their haste to produce heirs and make their hope reality. In the meantime, God continues to show up in the middle of disputes, during blights, and in eleventh hour miracles.
Did the Israelites worship a golden calf because they forgot God, or because it was a reliable image? The Israelites made a statue of a young bull, an image of power. They went on to demand kings, to look for warriors and expect a Messiah who would overthrow the government and restore their prosperity. They looked for things they could understand. They relied on their incomplete pictures, their expectations and their time tables, while they waited at the foot of the mountain.
They impatiently waited for God. For I Am. They waited for a God who never changes, never lies and is always faithful. They waited for God who had made a covenant with them. God who keeps His promises. And they mistook waiting for Him as a change in plans. They tried to make a powerful image to ease their wavering faith.
How many times had the people of Israel known fear before the moment they fashioned the calf? They waited at the foot of the mountain while the mountaintop rumbled and Moses disappeared. They had waited while the earth vomited plagues, while children died in the night, while their slave labor increased unbearably. They waited with death at their door with nothing but a promise and a smear of blood over their doorpost to protect them. They walked forward into an angry wall of water while soldiers chased them from behind. They grumbled. They feared. And waited.
They relied on their imaginations and they trusted their understanding. We have done the same. We are surprised at God’s faithfulness. We marvel at answered prayer. But our prayers are limited by our experience and our expectations.
God’s ways are higher than even our hopes and dreams. They are surprises that take moments and years. They can test our courage and our devotion. They are perfect situations in perfect timing that appear to us as mistakes and wastes of time, as coincidences and delays. We cannot trust our understanding. We must pray to trust God’s leadership and to rely on Him. His ways are higher and His ways are better than our imaginations can begin to realize. We must submit fully to Him and to patiently wait at the foot of the mountain.
Written by Janet Keefe
