Raised Up for This Very Purpose

Exodus 9:16. In the middle of the plague of hail, God sends Pharaoh a message that turns his self-understanding upside down. He could have wiped Pharaoh and his people from the earth already. Instead he has raised Pharaoh up for a purpose: that God might show him his power, and that God's name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

Pharaoh believed he was the center of the story. Egypt's monuments say so in stone. The verse tells him that he is a supporting character, kept in place so that the name of the LORD would be known far beyond the Nile. Paul quotes this verse in Romans 9:17 when he is wrestling with how God's sovereign purposes run through human choices, including resistant ones.

Monday morning is a good time to remember it. The people and powers that seem to run your world are not the point of your world. They exist within a purpose that is not theirs, and the name that will finally be proclaimed everywhere is not on any building. Your work today, however small, belongs to that proclamation.