They said, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.” Exodus 2:19 (Chapter 2)
Moses was born into the home of Hebrew slaves. He had to be hidden in a basket, floated in the Nile and guarded by his sister, to protect him from death at the hands of Pharaoh. However, a princess found him, paid his own mother to nurse him and then took him as her own child where he was given the finest education to be found.
Jochebed, Moses’ mother, did not waste the few years she was given with her son. She instilled the simple traditions of her faith so deeply that all the allurements of a heathen palace did not tempt him into turning his back on the people of his birth or their God. The first forty years of his life, mostly spent in luxury, did not halt Moses’ compassion for his fellow man.
Moses committed a murder that separated him from his homeland and all he knew. As a runaway fugitive he found himself at a well where women who had come to water their flocks were being accosted by shepherds. Moses defended them and took their manual labor upon himself. The father of these women invited Moses into his home and gave him a wife. As an alien in a foreign land, Moses made a new start, but little did he know, God was preparing him to be the perfectly skilled liberator of His covenant nation.
If you are distracted or overwhelmed by hardship and disappointment, stop and ask what wonders God is preparing you for. Perseverance isn’t for the faint of heart. So, the difficulties we struggle with may simply be the fitness training of the soul. Moses had to grow and learn, and so must we.
Happy Friday,
Gretchen