Light by Night

Night in the desert. No moon. No lamps. No roads. And yet a whole nation is on the move, families, flocks and little children, and none of them is lost in the dark. Because out in front of them, a column of fire is burning.

Israel has just left Egypt. After the Passover night, Pharaoh finally let them go. Now hundreds of thousands of people are walking out of slavery, with their animals, their bread dough still in kneading bowls, and the gold and silver jewellery the Egyptians gave them as they left. They have never been free. They have never travelled through a desert. Nobody among them has done this before. Grandparents lean on walking sticks. Children ride on donkeys or on their fathers' shoulders. Where will they go? Which road will they take? And who will lead them through the empty wilderness, by day and by night?

There was a short way out. The coastal road ran north-east along the sea, straight towards the land of the Philistines and then Canaan. But God did not lead them that way, even though it was nearer. Exodus tells us why. God said, “Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” The short road was full of danger. These newly freed slaves were not ready to face battle. So God led them the long way round, by the road through the wilderness towards the Red Sea. God knew what they could handle, even when they did not. Sometimes the longer road is the kinder one.

Moses brought something unusual on the journey: the bones of Joseph. Hundreds of years earlier, Joseph had made his family promise. “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones away from here with you.” Joseph believed God would one day bring his people home. Now, at last, they were going, and they kept that old promise. The people moved on from Succoth and camped at Etham, at the edge of the wilderness. The edge. Beyond lay sand and rock and wide, empty sky.

And then the wonder. “The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them on their way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light, that they might go by day and by night.” By day, a great column of cloud, showing the way and giving shade from the burning sun. By night, the same column glowing like fire, lighting up the whole camp. And Exodus adds one more line: the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. Not once. On good days and grumbling days, God was there in front of them. Long afterward, Jesus stood in the temple in Jerusalem and said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness.

The short road God avoided was real. Egyptian records describe a military highway along the northern coast of Sinai, which Egyptians called the Ways of Horus. Pharaohs lined it with forts and water stations, guarded by soldiers. Archaeologists have uncovered some of these forts in northern Sinai. For a crowd of escaping slaves, that road would have meant marching straight past Egypt's army posts.

Light by night. You'll find it in Exodus chapter thirteen, verses seventeen to twenty-two. A people who did not know the way, led every step by a God who went ahead of them. So here is a question to carry with you. When the road ahead looks dark or long, how can you remember that God goes before you?