"Then there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as was not like it before, nor shall be like it again."
From the Plagues of Egypt three millennia ago may lie answers to the Plagues of America in 2020 when coronavirus, hurricanes, wildfires, police brutality, heatwaves, murder hornets and pestilence are scourging the continent.
According to the book of Exodus, Moses went to the Pharoah offering a simple cure for Egypt’s plagues: “Let my people go.” And had the Pharoah acquiesced, as the story goes, the plagues would have ended.
So where is the Moses in America, and what does he or she want? Is he a Guatemalan priest praying for an end to the detention of desperate asylum-seekers and the caging of their children? Is he a climate scientist begging for government officials to take him seriously before it’s too late? Or is she an inner city mother petitioning God for justice over the senseless beating of her child?
Why is all this happening now? Why does it seem that God has turned against us? What can we do to make things better? Go ask Moses.