Exodus 17

Water dominated the imaginations of our ancestors in faith, whose stories often called for either a canteen or galoshes.

The “promised land” is whatever is on the other side of this coronavirus.

In Exodus 17, the stone is transformed.

Why not lead these refugees directly to safety, milk and honey? Why the desert, the wandering, the long years so far from home?

It is tempting to sit in judgment on others. Sometimes we do it in jest, as Mark Twain did when commenting on Adam. “Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” But sometimes the serpent eats us, and then we judge in earnest.