In Exodus 17:8-16, we find Moses with Aaron and Hur on top of a hill overlooking Israel’s battle with the Amalekites. When Moses lifts up his arms with God’s staff in his hands, Israel prevails in the battle. When he lowers his arms, the Amalekites prevail. When his arms grow weary, Aaron and Hur place a rock beneath Moses for him to sit on and they stand on either side of him to hold his arms up. In doing so, Aaron and Hur do something that we all long for: someone to go with us to face the darkness and carry God’s presence into it when we’re too weak to go on our own.
This is the reality of what happens when a client walks into our Center. From the front desk, to the intake room, to the moment she leaves, she has someone ready and longing to go with her to look at herself – to look at the dark and scary battle within her she’s tried to run from – and hold her arms up as God’s presence is carried in to do the work that only He can do.
We can only know God if we know the true state of our hearts (Psalm 139:23-24). But we’re not made to go looking at our own nakedness alone. God loves to use His people to encounter the world.
As the Imago Dei, it is our call to go with the one in front of us to look, to hold their arms up, to see behind the fig leaves, and wait together as Christ comes with His robes of righteousness: the only covering that was ever enough to clothe our mortality (2 Corinthians 5:1-5).
We bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2); draw near to others as Christ draws near to us (John 13:34); and partner with “the Living One who sees” us (Genesis 16:13-15) because Life happens in community.
At CPRC, we are all too aware that we cannot save our clients or their babies. But that was never our call. Our call is to hold their arms up, like Aaron and Hur, as the Spirit of God appeals to the Imago Dei in them – the core of who they really are – and leads them to Life Everlasting.
A prayer for the Body of Christ: May we be a people who see; who offer a place to sit; who holds each other’s arms up not in an effort to save but to go with the other to be known by the self and by God, and watches and waits for the Spirit of God to lead them Home.
by Katelynn Martin