I taught 5th Grade for ten years at the same elementary school, in the same classroom, teaching the same subject every single one of those years. One could say I had grown incredibly comfortable in my role and could teach 5th Grade Language Arts sitting down with my eyes closed as I dozed off to sleep.
Now, I truly loved teaching 5th Grade, but there was something about hitting ten years of teaching that made me reevaluate the trajectory of my teaching career. I had two options. I could keep teaching at the school that I loved and become a teacher who taught there for twenty or more years, or I could leave and completely shift to a different school and grade-level. I chose option two.
God opened the door for me to teach high school. Spoiler alert. Leaving the comforts of that beloved elementary school and teaching high schoolers brought on many after-school tears and the regular thought of, “Why did God put this on my heart and open this door…I am miserable.”
The Background to the Book of Exodus
The story of Exodus begins as a story of a people living in Egypt who trusted the Lord and did what He asked of them: be fruitful and multiply. They believed this so deeply that Scripture says, “multiplied, and became exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them” (Exodus 1:7).
One of the reasons for their strength and abundance was because of a man named Joseph. Joseph was one of Jacob’s sons, a descendant of Abraham. Through a series of trials in Joseph’s life, God raised him to be second-in-command over the nation of Egypt. When a famine hit the land of Canaan, Joseph’s brothers and their father came to Egypt looking for food. Joseph’s position allowed him to protect his family, which would become the nation of Israel.
Though the book of Genesis ends on a high note of hope, the story of Exodus takes a turn. A new king comes to power in Egypt who did not know Joseph and did not have a heart for Joseph’s people (Exodus 1:8).
Questioning God in Hardship
All of a sudden, the Israelites become the enemy, and the new pharaoh in Egypt casts them all into slavery. But what about God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3 where the Lord told him, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing. I will bless those who bless you, but the one who treats you lightly I must curse, so that all the families of the earth may receive blessing through you”?
The Israelites followed the Lord into this land. After a season of growth and abundance, they were now being forced into something so opposite of what they expected. They began questioning the goodness of God and His sovereignty.
Isn’t that exactly what the enemy does? Satan wants every believer to turn against the Lord the moment our comfortability escapes us. He wants us to second-guess all the seasons of abundance and kindness the Lord has given us the moment it feels like the Lord has turned His back. But, we cannot only praise God on the mountaintop and begrudge Him in the valleys.
The people of Israel had a choice to keep trusting the Lord and His proven character or turn their back on Him when their current situation felt dire.
Trusting God in the Midst of Hardship
I taught one year of high school, and it was the toughest year of my career. I regularly wondered, “Lord, did I misunderstand the nudges to leave teaching elementary?” By God’s grace, I was able to step back and see the bigger picture of how God was using me with those high schoolers.
I could’ve sided with the enemy and viewed God as cruel and confusing. Even through the hard days, weeks, and months, God continuously gave me glimpses of Him at work, which kept me in those high school hallways loving those students.
The book of Exodus, and the entire Bible, is full of stories of God’s people trusting Him in the plenty and then turning towards worldly comforts when God wasn’t “performing” the way they wanted Him to. And that’s all of us.
I pray for anyone reading this that you take a step back to remember all the ways and seasons that God has abundantly provided for you. He has proven throughout the history of humanity, and in our own lives, that when hard seasons come (because they will, for all of us, multiple times in our lifetime) we can look to Him as our loving, sovereign, and trustworthy God.
