God Heard, God Remembered, God Saw

Exodus 2:24-25. The chapter ends with a run of verbs that carry the whole book. God heard the groaning of Israel. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God looked on the people. God knew, or was concerned about, their situation. Nothing has happened yet. The bricks are still being made, the taskmasters are still shouting, and Moses is still a shepherd in Midian who has given up on being anything else.

This is where the verse matters for today. We tend to date God's involvement from the moment things change. Scripture dates it earlier, from the moment God hears. The groaning in verse 23 is not even described as prayer. It is the sound people make when they have run out of words. And the text says that sound went up to God and was received.

If you are in a long stretch of nothing happening, this is your verse. Remembering, in the Bible, is not God recalling something he had forgotten. It is God turning toward a promise to act on it. The action may still be some chapters away. The hearing has already happened.