Daily Devotion for Day 9 of Lent 2016

Scripture Reading: Exodus 8:1-15 (NRSV)

When my children were younger, they used to collect toads in the backyard at Piedmont. Some evenings they would nab around a dozen.  We had an old empty aquarium that they used for temporary toad storage for an hour or so before letting them go.

I like frogs but not in my home!

That being said, twelve toads in one backyard was as close as I've ever come to the plague of frogs in the passage today.  I can't imagine what it would be like having them all over the house.

Evidently it was bad because Pharaoh finally relents and tells Moses that the Hebrew people can go worship God. However, when Moses stops the plague, Pharaoh can't help himself.  He goes back on his word.

This seems rather foolhardy in the sense that if it happened once, what's to prevent Moses from just turning back on the frogs like a great amphibious faucet?

Being short-sighted is something to which we can all relate from time to time.

Rather than change, we often fool ourselves into thinking that things really will stay the same if we want it bad enough.  What is something that you've resisted even though it was probably for the best?

And how are we called during Lent to give up things for the good of the whole?




Photo by Harmen Piekema via wikimedia commons.