Last night Bobby was telling me a crazy story about my brother-in-law, Billy. Billy recently has been watching some actors and movie people filming sequences for a television show that some of us watch. They were working on some scenes outside some apartments by the college he attends. I told Bobby that I thought it is silly how people get so worked up about celebrities these days, but conceded that it was pretty cool experience to see real actors in action.

The other day I received an invitation to a huge family reunion for my father’s side of the family. It urged us to attend saying that everyone would “really want to see us”. I started thinking about how interesting it is to see people. When we see a celebrity we are in awe, we get excited and ask for an autograph or picture and stare and gawk. When we haven’t seen someone for a long time under good circumstances we are happy to see them, catch up and notice good things about how they’ve grown or changed. When we haven’t seen someone for a long time under bad circumstances we feel nervous, anxious and hesitant. When we see someone that we don’t really like we might avoid talking to them or pass judgments on them.

This is all intriguing to me because I have people in my life who fall into each category, well…other than the celebrity one. I love to see my husband. I see him every day. I can’t wait to come home from work and be there together. I love just looking at him, listening to him talk, making him laugh, watching him read, just being with him. It is all so enjoyable and he is so encouraging to me. Seeing him is a highlight most every day.

There is another person I have to see regularly that I do not look forward to seeing, and sometimes even dread seeing. It has become an agony for me because it isn’t just seeing this person that is bad, it’s not like they are painful to look at. It is how they are that I dread. I know that they talk very loudly, walk loud, slam doors, and almost every conversation I have with this person is one sided because they talk constantly about themselves, their possessions, and their achievements. It is very discouraging.

I have long been in awe over the relationships that God had with some of the people in the Old Testament. How he walked in the garden with Adam, counted Abraham as His friend, the depths to which David knew Him, as a “man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). The story that really blows me away and gives me chills to read is in Exodus 33, when Moses meets with the Lord. It is an amazing passage of Moses waiting in a tabernacle for the Lord. And God, in the pillar of cloud descends into the tabernacle to talk with him. Verse 11 says,

It is so hard for my mind to grasp that God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth and all things that exist, spoke to a man so intimately. What is even more mind blowing is that He is the same God today that He was then. And we do not have to go into a tabernacle to talk to Him. We have clear passage from our heart straight to His throne room in prayer. And yet how seriously do we take this. Usually I find myself just taking this for granted.

This conversation between God and man continues as Moses recounts that he has obeyed what the Lord has commanded of him, to bring the Israelites to that place and he asks God to show him the way he must go. And God responds in verse 14,