Living in the post-2020 world, we know all about plagues. The COVID-19 pandemic affected a lot more than people’s physical health: it caused fear, suspicion and division between people and communities. And of course we are still seeing its impacts on the economy, people’s mental health and much more. When we read about the plagues in Egypt in the early chapters of Exodus, similarly, we can imagine the effects they would have had far beyond simply turning a river to blood or the daytime sky to darkness. It must have been a frightening time to be an Egyptian!
We are told that God did all of this so the Egyptians would know He is Lord (Exodus 7:5, 9:14). Yet, again and again, Pharaoh hardens his heart and refuses to learn this lesson, even promising to let the Israelites go only to renege on it when the plague is over. It’s easy to judge Pharaoh’s foolishness, but how often do we, too, refuse to learn from hard times? Just look at the world only five years after the COVID-19 outbreak. Have we gotten anywhere?
C.S. Lewis once said that “pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” God does not always send the plagues in our lives, but He does always use them to teach us lessons we might not learn otherwise. The most important one of all is that we should never rely on ourselves or think we can control a situation. God is Lord, and we live only by trusting and submitting to Him.
James