Look For the Glory

11/8/2023

Written By: April Mills

Earlier this week, I was doing some additional reading from our small group study in the book of Exodus. We had a discussion about seeing the face of God, and that conversation caused me to dive into the Word, where I landed at Exodus 33:18. Here in this passage, Moses is petitioning God to show Moses His glory. The following verses captivated me and painted a vivid picture in my mind of the conversation between God and man.

Exodus 33:19-21

And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. “But”, he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, and you will see my back, but my face must not be seen.”

I am taken with the generosity of God in this passage. In His kindness, He allowed Moses to see His glory but spared him from the certain death that would come if Moses gazed upon His Holy face. I understand why God placed Moses in the cleft of the rock and covered him with His hand in that moment. However, after reading this passage, I was left asking myself questions that caused me to pause and examine the landscape of my life.

How many times has the Lord covered my life with His hand? How many times has the goodness of the Lord gone before me, and I was completely unaware?

If I could go back and study my life frame by frame, how many times would I see the back of the Lord as He and His glory passed by me?

God is everywhere (Jeremiah 23:23) and His fingerprints are all over our lives, but often we are sidetracked and we miss Him. We certainly see Him in the big crisis moments of our lives. Our eyes are peeled looking for Him, and we live in expectancy that He will do something in our situation. We wait on bated breath for that much prayed for resolution to come to fruition.

Friend, if we can have real talk for a second and if I can speak to you in love - we are so distracted. We have so many things pulling at us from all directions, drawing away our focus and our attention. We are so busy. The clanging noise of life robs us of looking out from that split in the rock and catching a glimpse of His glory passing us by. We have become so preoccupied that we often fail to notice His hand covering our lives.

God is in the big, and in the little. He is in the quiet, and He is in the loud. He is in the mourning and He is in the dancing. I want to encourage you to be on the lookout for Him everywhere. Let’s shift our focus from the shiny things of this world, the latest and greatest, and all the things that will rust and fall apart.

Let’s clear our minds of clutter, schedules bursting at the seams and rushed lives. Can we find the resolve within our hearts to commit to living a life of praise and wonder? Can we make it practice to look for the places where God has covered us with His hand? Let’s act as surveyors, and study the map

of our lives to discover all the places His goodness has gone before us. By focusing on the glory and the works of the Lord, we will reap a rich harvest of thanksgiving, peace, joy and increase of faith. Rest assured friend, He is always at work. Look for Him, and you will find Him.