Photo by Binyamin Mellish: https://www.pexels.com/photo/mountains-305535/
Moses is the desert man, perhaps more than John the Baptist or Elijah. Moses spends 80 of his 120 year life wandering the wilderness. The first 40 in preparation for the next.
He comes to know it well, how to navigate it, how to survive its hostility, He becomes scriptures greatest guide of the desert, not just for the Israelites but for us as a spiritual Shepherd.
For us the desert isn’t a physical landscape so much but an illustration of an essential part of our journey, our life’s pilgrimage. For us the desert is the seasons where its hard, where we struggle, where we seem unable to find God clearly, maybe we even doubt he is there. A blistering sun with no shade is as blinding as darkness, the same faith to keep walking is needed as much in this place as in the darkness of the night. Maybe more so, because in the harshest of the suns rays our instinct is to find shade, somewhere to hide and the desert offers us none of that. And that is probably its biggest gift.
This is a rough and sketchy estimate but the ratio of desert days to mountain days for Moses is 325 to one, that’s one day of awe, splendour and undoubted connection with the creator compared to 325 days of wandering in the heat, with a lot of moaning people relying on the bare bones of your trust and faith, BUT we only reach the mountain through the desert. We only experience those life changing encounters with our God after a life changing journey to prepare us.
Day after day and year after year, Moses Still choses it. He shows us how this barren, harshest of places is for us and for him;
A place of escape – where the exterior distractions and the noise cant find you, but the harder interior ones you have perhaps avoided are given space to resonate and echo.
A place of preparation – a place of heart and character formation in readiness for encounter, change and then mission A place of discovery, your true identity, Gods’ true identity as love is more deeply understood in this place that seems to offer nothing to the untrained eye.
A place of learning where you are trained to trust in the guardianship, protection and providence of the Lord. A place to learn our own strengths and our limitations and our need for a saviour.
Does it ever become comfortable for Moses? – did Moses ever become so familiar with the austerity of this place that it was comfortable? I think it cannot ever become comfortable without changing the fundamental nature of the experience it offers. What did change was the heart of Moses.
Moses learnt to trust in Gods protection and provision and this takes away the internal fear. It changes nothing in the environment, so we each experience the desert from wherever we are in our journey, we may walk alongside each other through it, apparently the exact same path, but we each experience it uniquely according to where we are with the Lord with our trust and faith.
So lets do an imaginary walk with Moses to his first mountain top encounter. Look for those spiritual connections you may have experienced yourselves. Perhaps you’ve been settled in Midian a while now and your feeling that uncomfortable tug that its time to move, time to grow… Perhaps you are right in the centre of the desert, wondering where the exit road is and if you will ever find your way out? Or perhaps you are now at the Wadi, facing the steep climb of the mountain, just grateful that the desert season is behind you…. Take a moment now in silence to think of the hardest seasons you have travelled through, and maybe Moses will help us connect where the Lord was in these times and the fruit it may have born.
In the wilderness of Midian, with his hands shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun we meet Moses. Moses scoured the horizon, waiting for some sense or indication of the direction he should move off in. With the wheat stalks long since exhausted by the flock it was again time to move on in search of some other growth.
For the last 40 years He had longed for stability and connection. A predictability in his days, somewhere he felt rooted and connected. He bore an Egyptian name but no longer belonged there, it was Hebrew blood that coursed through his veins but he no longer belonged there either. Now he was a Midian shepherd, tending a flock that was never his own in a land that he had made a home but where he would always feel like a stranger.
Now the predictability wrestled with a disquiet. A restlessness in his Spirit that he tried to quieten, but that shouted all the louder every time he supressed it. It was the disquiet, the unsettled spirit that led Moses to take the flock to find new grazing pastures. It meant leaving the relative comfort of his home, his wife and child. But that comfort had become oppressive at times as if an unconscious rejection of all that remained in him of his past soaked in the spoils of Egypt.
He bowed for a blessing from his father-in-law and set off, staff in hand, sling shot in his pocket, enough water for a few days on his back. Jethro, a wise and kind man saw the turmoil etched across the brow of his son in law.
Moses headed West this time, the sun casting his shadow before him as it rose. He trusted that the God of Abraham, who had rescued him out of the waters of the Nile, out from the danger in Egypt and delivered him to this place of safety would not fail him. He gripped tight in his heart the stories whispered to him as a child by his birth family, he hoped that Yahweh still went with him, though he was far from his home. The God of his ancestors was his only connection now with his people.
He was growing well in his skills as a shepherd, instinctively knowing the needs of the flock he had come to know well. When the sheep had been well fed they followed obediently, when they grew tired or had been unsettled he walked behind them, letting them set the pace. And when they were fearful, had been frightened by the presence of some wild animal, well then he walked in the midst of them aware of the need of his closer presence.
In the distance to his right he could see a thin shimmering line of blue, the Red sea. So slight it could easily have been mistaken for a heat haze, He took comfort from the distance of it. A familiar feeling rose in his chest, the memory of Egyptian blood on his hands and the rapid escape to save his life, and leaving his family behind. The memory often surfaced unannounced in unguarded moments, the guilt and fear consuming his thoughts and stealing his breath. He pacified himself, the Sea was wide and deep and uncrossable. He would not be facing his past today, though it hung heavier than the weight of the water on his back.
The solitude of the desert seemed to magnify Moses sense of disconnection, it was an unhealed wound he knew, even after forty years, the unresolved, abandoned life, the severing from his blood, from his roots.
And the restlessness persisted. It wasn’t eased from the escaping here, if anything it intensified with the lack of distraction. He looked down at his feet “Sand has a habit of shifting and revealing all the hidden things” he thought as his sandals disappeared into a wind cast dune. He would soon learn that in its own way it was all Holy ground.
They reached the Wilderness of sin, In the native tongue the name meant thorn. It was surely one of the very few things that grew here, his stomach growled in complaint, and his mood followed suit. Why was he here in the middle of nowhere, with someone else’s flock, with nothing to eat, what if he had chosen the wrong route? Would this not all be easier if it were the right one? This all so felt pointless, unnecessary.
“Where are you Now God of Abraham?” he shouted out loud, startled at the anguish in his own voice, “Who even are you anyway?”
He finished the last of the water in his flask and was cheered to find some last pieces of forgotten bread in the bottom of his sack. It was enough for today, and although he deliberated keeping some back for tomorrow, his hunger overtook him and he ate it all. The sheep too found just enough to fuel the next part of the journey and in the light of the next morning the dew provided a little water. Perhaps in his mercy Yahweh would again provide today.
Up ahead Mount Horeb loomed large on the horizon. Here there would be water, the freshest kind, running in streams from its sides, maybe even a Wadi and where there was water things grew, here they could rest and graze for a few days. They continued to walk forwards, and at times it felt like hours had passed without getting any closer to the mountain. It was only the changing formations of rock that told him they were moving forward at all. It took days. or was it weeks now, he was unsure as each day bled into the next. There were no short cuts. But as long as he set his eyes on the mountain, he had the strength to keep moving.
When at last they reached the wadi at its base, and the last of the sheep had started to drink did Moses look back up from his flock. Something on the mountain had caught his eye.
The Lord we know appears here to Moses, he speaks to him through a burning bush, God reveals his name and tasks him to return to the very place he had fled from not so very long ago in fear of his life. Yes there is a bigger purpose for Moses to fulfil here, but to the Lord, just as important was the returning to the place where his guilt and fear lived, for it needed to be overcome if he was ever to walk in freedom.
This is the first of many mountains for Moses, and its here he asks the question deepest on his heart “Who am I?” and it’s from here The great “I AM” sets out to answer this for him. God had made the desert a university for Moses, it had challenged him and formed him. God used the desert to take the impulsive nature of Moses and shape it, He allowed the desert to take his desire to belong and direct it. God used the desert to take that restlessness and transform it into courage action and mission God used the desert to take that passion for justice in Moses and give him the opportunity to make the biggest sacrifices in order to serve it. ….. and above all faith in his creator, enough faith for a nation.
Questions
Have you experienced the desert in your journey, a time of trial, struggle or challenge?
What good came out of the experience? How did you grow?
Did the Lord feel distant or close?
If you were to revisit that time, what advice could you give to those following you?
Would you go back to the desert, that time of trial if that was your only way of a mountain top encounter?
For private reflection – Who does God say you are?
