something i wrote for our youth weekly newsletter
For all my life, I wanted so badly to be His little David, His little psalmist. So I wasn’t really impressed when He first whispered ‘be My little Moses, My little staff bearer’. No disrespect to Moses but I was thinking ‘How cool can little Moses be?’ So I decided to dig up on this guy and found out that I must have misheard God.
There can be miracle when you believe. Indeed a fitting song to be “Prince of Egypt’ soundtrack. After all, the tale of Israelites’ exodus from Egypt is arguably one of the greatest tales of miracles ever told in the Bible. What about Moses? He was considered one of the greatest leaders ever, leading 2 million Israelites out of Egypt. He was regarded as one of the greatest men of God ever, so favored by God that he even made a cameo appearance in New Testimony. But was he that great a person?
Let’s see. The first ‘great’ thing he did once he had grown up was to kill an Egyptian soldier and fled to Midian for 40 years. Not exactly smart. When he first met God, instead of the usual ‘Yes Lord, I will go’, he times and again showed his doubts despite all the signs God showed him. God was so mad at him that God eventually gave up and said ‘Okay, you win. Let you be like God and your brother, Aaron, be like the prophet to speak My words. He would speak to My people and Pharaoh. But take this staff with you to perform miraculous signs’. So Aaron was the ‘great’ leader we refer to apparently.
We can go on an on and we would never find a verse that tell us what Moses’ talents are. Whenever there was battle, Moses wouldn’t be out there on the battlefield, Caleb would. He didn’t defeat tens of thousand of soldiers like David did. When they almost reached Canaan, he, as the leader, was unable to convince the Israelites who listened to 10 cowards spies and cost them a great detour in the wilderness.
But here he was, the guy who saw 10 unbelievable plagues over Egypt happening, sea parting, manna falling from the sky, water coming out from the rock, and most importantly, the guy who saw and converse with God face to face every day. This was the man who Bible deemed as incomparable. Never had history seen such a man before and after Moses who had such an experience with God bar none. Alright, Jesus is an exception.
What is so special about him?
Probably it is his persistence. He persisted not to take another step unless God walk with him, not even angels are good enough for him. He persisted to see God’s glory that God finally gave in, did some trick to let him see His back. And most amazingly, he persisted that God erase his name from His Book of Life unless God forgave the Israelites. He was so persistent in his pursuit of God that he couldn’t be satisfied until he could interact with God the way best friends do. How could God not in love with him?
His journey with God has been one of the most romantic tales ever- A story of a man who, despite all his excellent education background and status in the past (hey, he was the prince of Egypt), was only called by God when he had already lost all his status and confidence. He was at the point when he thought he was a nobody, a stranger who was good for nothing. But this was probably what God told him when they first met: “You are just in perfect condition to be the vessel that I would use to do things people will talk about for thousands of years; things so great that none of your talents and background would help anyway. But your total surrender helps.”
Ever since he walked with Him, he got no skill, no talent, nothing to boast but faith in the staff that brought him thru and thru. The same staff that God gave him when they first met, the same staff that parted the sea, the same staff that, I believe, he hold onto dearly before his last breath. Never for one second had God stayed further from Moses than the staff did. After all, the Bible says, they are best friends.