In the desert of Sinai the Israelites watch Moses leave them to climb the mountain where he will meet with God.
Exodus 24:15-18 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights
It is not a small thing to meet God. For six days Moses waits to enter the cloud atop the mountain. How casually we assume the ear of God. It is promised. But we should never take it lightly.
Moses remains in the cloud for forty days. He is, after all, going to be a key conveyor of God's truth not only to his generation but to us all.
For most people the idea of spending 40 days in a mountain cloud with God - after waiting a week to be called in - seems to lack practicality. This is certainly what the Israelites (at the foot of the mountain) thought:
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered round 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.’
'May they be forgiven', we sigh in disgust, (oh, and by the way, I'm too busy to come to the prayer meetings . . .)
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