Pharaoh’s magicians can’t create gnats. They tried. They had thought they might be able to do it. Was God preventing it this time?
God gets blamed a lot for bad things happening, but do we give Him credit for the millions of times He prevents it?
Pharaoh still has a hard heart, but his magicians are now recognizing God. They tell Pharaoh that the gnats are from the finger of God.
Do you see the finger of God in your life? Have you ever needed an unbeliever to point out to you how blessed you were?
Where do you see the finger of God in your life? Hopefully, you can look back and see ways the story unfolded to get you right where you are today, fulfilling His purposes for your life. Hopefully, you can look at your day today and realize there are more blessings than you can count in just waking up, opening your eyes, and breathing.
Hopefully, you can see the finger of God in how you are separate from the world. You are treated differently. The story plays out differently for you. You see a good Father caring for you, teaching you and training you, and using you for His glory.
When God sends the flies, the separation is made distinct for the first time in these plagues. The flies will be everywhere but Goshen, the home of the Hebrews, the land given to Joseph and his family.
Hopefully, you can also see times when a line was drawn. Sometimes we get to see the ways we’ve been spared.
Sometimes that line of separation can feel painful. It’s an exclusion from the world and everything and everyone in it. It can make a believer feel different, excluded, cast out. It’s those times we need to remember who’s on the same side of the separation with us. There are the others in the Body of Christ, true believers who have felt the same rejection. There is a great cloud of witnesses who have already gone through such persecution and came out in glory on the other side. And, there is Christ Himself on your side.
There’s no other side I’d rather be on.