Moses Musings

Receiving the fullest blessings

I have long been fascinated with Moses of the Bible. Moses is the first person I want to meet when I get to Heaven (followed closely by Paul). Moses didn’t have any special gifts. He was just a man, and an obviously imperfect one at that. But God chose him, spoke with him and used him. I find myself trying to figure out the man that God used in such a mighty way time and time again.

First of all, Moses had God’s hand on him from the start, considering he even lived past infanthood. Moses should have died of any number of things: drowning, predators, dehydration or starvation. There is no logical reason that Pharoah’s daughter should have looked on a Hebrew baby with favor; it doesn’t make sense that Pharoah should have allowed it. And yet Moses lived and grew up in the house of Pharoah of Egypt.

It looks like Moses’s heart was in the right place when he lashed out in anger against the Egyptian taskmaster—and yet we quickly understand that Moses was a hothead that made rash decisions and a coward who ran in fear. Not that I am judging. I get Moses more than I would like to, I’m just trying to understand what God saw in him.

So Moses ran away and began a new life. Tempting! And while he may have lived with a heart for God during that time, there is no record that he was doing anything special on the outside. He was getting up and going to bed, getting married and tending his sheep, having sons and living his life—bothering nobody but yet doing nothing about the great anguish and persecution he knew existed in the world beyond Midian and happening to his own race of people.

Then came the burning bush moment. I have got to credit Moses at this point, because as intriguing as the sight must have been, Moses had to know that this was God doing something that he was going to get roped into if he walked over there. Moses could have rationalized that Zipporah was going to be mad if he missed supper, or that his sheep really needed his attention. He could have even been too afraid, or too selfish with his time. But Moses bothered to go look and see what God was up to, and so God called to him.

God chose Moses to do a really big job. God used Moses to show some awesome displays of power. I’m wondering if people more outwardly committed to God were insulted by God’s choice. And of course God doesn’t make mistakes, but wasn’t God just the tiniest bit put out when instead of responding with gratitude and awe over God’s assignment, Moses instead whined and complained and tried to wiggle out of the honor?

If Moses had refused to go back to Egypt, God would have found another way to free the Israelites but Moses would have been the loser. As it is, Moses already didn’t get the full blessing of his encounter with God. Moses insisted that he could not do the talking himself. Even though God spared Moses as a baby, saw him raised as a Christian by his own mother, delivered him from Egypt to Midian when he should have been killed as a murderer, set a bush on fire that didn’t burn up and spoke to him from the midst of it—Moses didn’t believe that God could use him to speak publically. But you know, I think that it isn’t that Moses didn’t believe God could do it. I think that Moses didn’t believe God could do it for him.

Why do we always feel like the person next to us is somehow more worthy than we are? We look on the outside and determine our value. We listen to others and determine our value. We look in the mirror and determine our value. And our calculations are always wrong.

God does not determine our worth, value or potential based on how we look, what our job is or how many organizations we volunteer for. We are not even ranked by how many hours we spend in prayer or how dog-eared our Bibles are (or aren’t!). God says we are all sinners and all unworthy without Him. And with Him? We can do anything.

Moses had an encounter with God at the burning bush. Moses took the job of a lifetime when he agreed to be God’s messenger boy and go back to Egypt. However, he missed out on a huge blessing when he told God no to speaking himself. God still got the job done, but used Aaron instead of Moses. Had Moses not given in to fear and self-doubt, he would have witnessed the awesome power of God working through him, around and in spite of his weaknesses.

I’m still in awe of Moses, and what God accomplished through him. I’m humbled to know that God can and does use plain old people with visible faults to do amazing God-sized things. But I also recognize that we sell ourselves short when we yield to fear, anger and disobedience. God will get the work done with or without our cooperation. It is us that misses out on the full blessing.