The Hebrew people entered the desert
feeling themselves as a united and strong people, and you’d think that perhaps
they would have experienced greater strength as they continued, but not so:
they experienced fragmentation and weariness; they experienced divisions among
their people. They were not the people they thought they were. The Jewish
exodus is a rather perfect metaphor for spirituality.
When all of our idols are taken away, all our securities
and defense mechanisms, we find out who we really are. We’re so little, so
poor, so empty—and a shock to ourselves. But the Biblical God takes away our
shame, and we are eventually able to present ourselves in an honest and humble
form. Then we find out who we really are and who God is for us—and it is more
than enough. That is how an enslaved people became God’s people, Israel.
Richard Rohr
