The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:11).

Happy Monday!  A new week and a new Scripture passage to dive into.

This week, as we continue to Make Room in our lives for God, we’ll spend some time with Moses.  We’ll consider again, as we have over the past few weeks, the practices of prayer.  (Remember Jonah praying from inside a fish, Ezekiel praying from inside exile in Babylon?)

What a disaster!  A catastrophe: God has delivered his people from their slavery in Egypt, had led them out as a triumphant army, parting the sea so that they could pass through on dry ground, then bringing the waters back to destroy their enemies.  God has lead them with a pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night.  He has provided food and drink, despite all their complaining and grumbling.

Now God has summoned Moses to the summit of Sinai, to give his covenant to his people.  Moses has been up there for more than five weeks!  The Israelites start to say things like, “Where is God, anyway?  Who is this guy Moses, really?  We want gods we can see and handle and, you know, kind of control.”  So they make a calf-god and, as we guilty ones often do when our guilt overwhelms us, throw a wild party as a distraction (for all the background, read through Exodus 32).

God has, to put it mildly, had it: “I’ll keep my promise to give you the Land, but I am not going there with you; I’ll send an angel in my place.  But as for me, I’m done with these people!”

Moses responds by pitching a tent, outside the camp, and calls it “the tent of meeting.”  And he goes there to meet with God … face to face.  And, Exodus tells us, “the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.”

Face to face.  When speaking of the LORD, words eventually fail us.  God does not have a “face” or a “mighty arm,” or “eyes” that see everything, not in any physical way.  Face to face means mutual attentiveness … honest, vulnerable communication … entrusting yourself to the one you face … to honor … to give yourself in love.

Moses made a space, this “tent of meeting,” to meet with God – and God showed up!  They “meet” regularly, the pillar of God’s Presence descending and filling a very ordinary, human-crafted place, a tent.  They had a lot to talk about: The great sin of the people, their breaking of the covenant; how to deal with the terrible outflow from that sin; God’s seeming unwillingness to “go with” or “be among” them any longer.

That was the death-blow: to lose God’s presence, to lose access to face-to-face communion with God.  If that is lost, nothing else will matter, not Land, not covenant, not promises.  To lose the Presence is to lose everything.

The kind of prayer we call intercession can often be portrayed as only for the Really, Seriously Spiritual, the “prayer warrior.”  But what it really is— just ordinary people in face-to-face communion with the extraordinary God about people and situations that both of us care about deeply.

What might it look like for you to “turn your face” towards God – what are one or two ways you could practice that each day?

Once face to face, what would you like to talk about?