A Glimpse of Promise
Some thoughts about the consequences of pride, authentic leadership, and acceptance.
I wonder what Moses felt as he stood on Mount Nebo, looking out across the Jordan to the land of milk and honey—the land promised to the people he led out of slavery in Egypt. His people, and also not. Moses had been set apart, saved from death as an infant, and raised in the lap of Egyptian luxury by the very institution responsible for his people’s suffering. And he was the one charged with the task of walking back into the place he fled, to be the hand God would use to demand Pharaoh let His people go.
Moses died on that mountain, and God Himself buried him.
After all he endured and after all the work he did, Moses only had a small glimpse of the fruit of his life’s labor. Speaking of fruit, I wonder how sweet the fruit Eve took would have tasted had she planted its seeds herself, faithfully watering, tending, and waiting patiently for them to ripen. Was the longing Moses felt the day he found the Egyptian guard beating the Israelite slave, similar to Eve’s longing to know what God knew?
Moses wanted to end the suffering of the Israelites, and like Eve, he seized the small opportunity available to him, not to end their suffering, but to appease his anger. And when it didn’t satisfy his true longing, like Adam and Eve, he hid.
But we can’t hide from God, can we?
It’s sort of poetic that Moses was tending a flock of sheep when he encountered God in the wilderness near Horeb, for the first time. I tend to laugh when I picture his curious gaze upon that burning bush as he says, “This is amazing,” and “why doesn’t that bush burn up? I must go see it.” (Exodus 3:3).
I wonder if he was curious or just an impulsive person because he acts so quickly that God has to warn him that his life is in danger just being in close proximity to God’s essence. When God calls him by the Egyptian name his adoptive mother gave him, he responds, “Here I am!” His identity isn’t entirely fractured, and still not whole (Exodus 3:4).
“I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” God said, and at this, Moses hid his face in fear (Exodus 3:5-6).
If I put myself in his shoes, knowing why he fled Egypt in the first place, I think he likely felt both fear and deep shame. Shame for surviving infancy when so many baby boys didn’t. Shame for growing up in Pharaoh’s court while his own family and his people suffered in slavery. Shame for taking a life, and shame for running away.
“Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?” he asks (Exodus 3:11).
And it’s a fair question—one that God responds to simply, “I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12). It doesn’t matter what may or may not disqualify Moses for this task. The creator of the universe walks with him.
Unconvinced that it will be enough, Moses continues to balk, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” (Exodus 3:13).
Moses wasn’t Egyptian enough to convince Pharaoh to free the Israelites, and he wasn’t Hebrew enough to even speak of the God of Abraham with any authority, yet he had all the authority he needed because God was with him.
“I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). In other words, tell them, I come in the authority of the God who Is.
The I Am, who at all times—past, present, and future—is.
I Am too, so that I will become. Aren’t we all becoming something? The I Am, God, is at all times, aware of who we are from conception to the grave, and beyond. He knows why he made us, and what He plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11).
Many forces, including our own egos, work tirelessly to pull us off the mark God set us upon, convincing us daily that we aren’t capable, disciplined, or good enough to do the work God planned for us. It works, because pride is one hell of a drug.
Pride has the power to blind us from seeing truth in ourselves, in others, and in God. It keeps us from being the truest, most pure, versions of ourselves. Pride lies well enough to convince us that the past disqualifies us from the future.
When God calls us, the things we have said and done that we’re ashamed of and wish we could do-over, those moments usually don’t disqualify us from what God asks. In fact, the shame of our past mistakes likely qualifies us more than we can understand, because of what we learned from it. Paul the Apostle is a good example of this. When shame shows us something true, is it really shame at all?
I think it becomes something new and much more valuable. Shame, conscience, or whatever you prefer to call it—when we allow ourselves to process and feel what it wants to teach us, becomes experience and empathy. That’s the stuff that makes good leaders. Our mistakes and weaknesses are essential to the integrity of the person we’re becoming.
So, how does one learn to confess the authenticity of who they really are, or unmask the parts of themself that they’d rather keep hidden from the world, when the world has only ever demanded we stick to its scripted expectations without flaw? How can anyone become what God intended, when we’re trained to perform the identities that are assigned to us? I can’t speak for everyone, but all God has ever asked of me is my trust and authenticity.
I am, that I am.
I am, so that I will be.
I am, because I once was.
Our lives are in constant transformation. So are our bodies, hearts, and minds. We’re built for direction and movement. Onward growth, “toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14). Like honeysuckle vine, we are meant for a decadently scented life that expands and overpowers the elements that try to bring us down.
Our lives revolve around nature’s repetition, ticking clocks, daily rhythm, and routine. We innately know this, as do our bodies, as do the deepest longings of our souls, so why do we get stuck so easily and so often?
Moses is immersed in the gentle rhythm of herding sheep when he meets God. At this point, he has tried rebuilding a life away from Egypt and his fractured identity. And, having taken a life to avenge the suffering of his kin, I think it’s safe to assume he feels deep regret and still longs for the Israelites’ freedom. He likely feels unfulfilled playing the part of a shepherd tending a flock of sheep, when he was made to lead a nation of people.
“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering” God says, almost as if he were answering an unspoken prayer plucked straight out of Moses’s heart (Exodus 3:7). I think God breaks our hearts that way, so we’ll have no choice but to pay attention to the need He put us here to meet.
When Moses tries to explain to the one who made him that he isn’t eloquent and too slow of speech, God tells him something I find comforting when I think of my own shortcomings. “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Exodus 4:10-12).
When I think of the traits and qualities God wove into the fabric of me, the ones I’ve believed to be more hindrance than strength, this reminds me that God enjoys the process of refining his children. God leads us through experiences designed to turn the pieces of us the world has written off as weakness, into ironclad strength.
For Moses, that meant working with his brother Aaron, who would speak on his behalf to both Pharaoh and the Israelites. When he tells God again that he’s still skeptical Pharaoh will even listen to him because of his stuttering, God shares his plan to harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 6:30-7:5). It wouldn’t matter what Moses, Aaron, or anyone else did to try and convince Pharaoh to set Israel free, because Pharaoh’s denial of the request was part of God’s plan.
Maybe the daily manna of frustration and overwhelm I’ve felt lately, is part of God’s plan too.
Life is hard. It’s especially difficult when you already feel like you are the sole well in the village, with a constant parade of need, dipping into your rapidly depleting reserves. It’s even more difficult when you already have more than you can handle, and then feel the call officially coming in. Ready or not, the wildest adventure you’ve ever dared to dream of is here. God is in charge and he already knows, so don’t bother complaining about why you think you can’t.
When the disciples told Jesus to send the multitudes home because there wasn’t enough food, he told them, “You give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16). When we pray to God and ask him to take care of a problem, he doesn’t simply fix the problem. He empowers us to do it, and He goes with us.
The perceived complication is always part of the plan. The fear you have about letting everyone down? Planned. The busiest season of your life: work, children, illness, uncertainty. All of it serves a purpose. As I consider the weight of my own responsibilities, I can almost hear that still small voice whisper, is all of this still not enough for you to rely on me? Search me, God, because I honestly don’t know what to let go of first.
Moses, after dealing with the stubbornness of Pharaoh, and leading the “stiff-necked” nation of his kinsmen through the Red Sea, and into the wilderness where all the grumbling ensued, finds himself in his own state of overwhelm. His father-in-law, Jethro is proud and excited to witness Moses at work and observes him as he goes about his business, quickly noticing just how thin Moses has spread himself.
“When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, ‘What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?’” Moses explains that the people seek God’s will, so they bring disputes, and ask for guidance. Life goes on, even in the wilderness. It never occurred to Moses that he didn’t have to be the one to attend to all those needs. “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone.” (Exodus 18:14-18).
Personally, I can read those words, comprehend their meaning, acknowledge their truth, and still have no idea how to apply them to my own life.
Pride truly is one hell of a drug.
And it’s one that eventually catches up. After forty years of leading a traumatized nation of people out of slavery in Egypt, through an ocean, and into the wilderness, and after mediating between them and God, to the point that no one can actually look upon Moses’s face, after helping establish laws to facilitate both pastoral and communal care for each other, Moses finally reaches his breaking point in the Desert of Zin, where his sister Miriam dies.
Miriam, the one who placed him inside of a basket into the Nile and watched from a distance until Pharaoh’s daughter found him. The one who made sure his own mother would be the one to nurse and wean him. Miriam was the sister who saved him.
When the people began complaining about having no water, God tells Moses and Aaron to speak to the rock and bring water out of it, before the eyes of the community, so they and their livestock can drink. Moses, instead, takes the staff, uses sarcasm as he speaks, calling the Israelites rebels, and hits the rock twice. Water gushes out for them all to drink (Numbers 20:7-11).
You can almost miss where he went wrong. The satisfaction of giving in to his frustration, that small beat in time prevents Moses and Aaron from entering the promised land. Not a failure, but a moment of human grief and exhaustion that caused him to lash out and forget to honor God. The fact that they didn’t get to go into the promised land wasn’t punishment for not honoring God, though. It was simply a consequence of being human. Anger and pride always take their toll.
God says, “Because you did not trust me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them” (Numbers 20:12).
God had Moses take Aaron and his son Eleazar up to Mount Hor in sight of the congregation, where Aaron was stripped of his garments, the garments then placed on Eleazar as a transfer of authority. And then, Aaron, the brother who spoke for him, died.
I imagine Moses standing there at the end of his own life and wonder if he was too grief-stricken and exhausted to notice how much pride had taken from him. Then again, I’m not sure leading the people across the Jordan was ever intended to be Moses’s task.
In the end, I think Moses accepted that the glimpse of his promise would have to be enough.