I've decided to spend a little time studying the life of Moses. Its a bit of a long story explaining why but I'll try to sum it up by saying I have had questions all of my life about why God placed me in the home he did when I was born. You see, I am adopted. He could have put me in any household looking for a child but he chose the one he did for a reason. Yet, even after wondering about this for the last 25+ years I still have no clue as to the reason why the stork dropped me off where he did. It occurred to me this last week that Moses has the same sort of situation. Yes, he was born to his own mother and he was even raised by her to a point but the Bible says that once he was raised, he was taken back to Pharaoh's daughter and given to her to finish raising as her own child. Do you think his mother told him he had a great purpose in life? Do you think he wondered why he was spared and what God wanted of him for sparing his life?
As I go through Exodus, I thought I would write some of the interesting things that strike me along the way. I tend to have a wicked, sarcastic sense of humor and I find much humor in the Bible. If you have raised children, you should too. Very often, God deals with us just as we deal with our children. Here's a prime example:
How many times have you reasoned with your child to get them out the door in the morning or to get them to jump in the pool or get on the school bus or get off of the school bus, etc. All the while we are compromising with them in the back of our minds we are thinking "Good Grief! How ridiculous is this??" I feel this is exactly what God did with Moses when he balked at being the one to speak to Pharaoh. "Oh no God, I CAN'T do that!" What Moses is really saying is "I don't WANT to do that. I'm afraid!". Now, can't you just see God standing there, arms crossed, tapping the front of his foot up and down and saying, "OOOKKKK... what if Aaron goes with you and even stands in front of you?" All the while God knows he has fully equipped Moses for this task but he is giving in a bit to get the show on the road. How many times are we tempted to just sweep the little boogers up by the hand, plant a little pop on the hiney, and say "JUST DO IT!"? I mean, let's face it, Nike has made millions with this statement. But no, God is patient and loving and works with Moses instead of just laying down the law.
Anyway... we serve a GREAT GOD! One who knows us inside and out and yet stops and says, "OK, what's the problem?" and then doesn't look at us like we are complete idiots for not believing in ourselves because both God and us know that he doesn't give us anything to do that is more than we can do. Why do we balk when we get a clear "GO" from God?
So, what's my point? I don't really have one other than to see the humor in the fact that God deals with us just as we deal with our children. He's the first and best role model we will ever have.
Here's another piece of humor I read today that is not really long enough for a blog entry but it cracked me up anyway. Should I mention somewhere in here that I'm currently taking a lot of pain pills for my back? Maybe that is why things are so funny to me these days. Oh well...
So, when God told Moses to throw his staff on the ground and it turned into a snake, Moses ran! Apparently, Moses was afraid of snakes! I'm not sure why I think that is funny. Maybe its because I am one of the only people I know who is not afraid of snakes. We do have to give Moses credit though because when God told him to pick up the snake by the tail the Bible doesn't say Moses hesitated at all. I would venture to guess that most of the snakes in that region were probably poisonous snakes too.
That's it. Just learning and laughing my way through Exodus!
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