Does God see us in our distress? Sure doesn’t feel like it. Everyone who ever contemplated God wonders where he is sometimes. This question courses through the Bible, expressed by David in his psalms and by the children of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness. Most tellingly Job, the oldest book in the Bible, centers around this theme—God do you know what’s happening to me? Do you care?

The Egyptian kings worried about the people of Israel who lived among them as their population swelled. So the kings put them to forced labor, and began an organized slaughter of Jewish baby boys. In the midst of such brutality, the people cried out for salvation.

Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

God knew. What a stunning reality. The God of the universe understood their plight, and in these words we see the promise of action to come. God remembered his earlier promises (as if God ever forgot), and knew the time to move had arrived.

God waited for the right leader (Moses), the right villain (Pharaoh), and the right people fed up enough to leave the only home they ever had to set off through the wilderness for a promised but unseen land inhabited by enemies bent on their destruction. God knew the time was right.

I think I know when the time is right, but God doesn’t always agree. When I complain about God not paying attention, stories like this one helps me perceive that God will act, albeit on his schedule. Despite my angst, I rest assured in that fact that the Lord sees and the Lord knows.

Exodus 2:23-25

Photo by Marco Grosso