Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
The Hebrew Scripture for this week offers us the death of Moses, who, after leading the people in the wilderness for forty years, is able to see the land that was promised to the Patriarchs, but he won’t be able to set foot onto it. This is a beautifully tragic moment. He’s worked so hard to live up to God’s expectations. But here he is, at the end, still unable to change God’s mind about this one.
None of the people who set out from Egypt will make their final steps into this space. That work is for their children and their children’s children. A work that resembles the promise to Abraham to make his offspring as plentiful as stars in the sky and then he has two sons, and only one rightful heir. An heir he almost murders. The promise to him was for him in the present, but that doesn’t mean it is revealed in the present. It occurs after Abraham has died. That’s when Isaac’s son, Jacob, collects wives and twelve sons.
The truth of God’s time, of God’s connection to the bigger story, is something the modern mind struggles with. We want Moses to touch, not just see the land, because we want our own struggles to be realized in our own time. But in God, this is tragedy made beautiful. All that Moses works for us is not for himself, but for everyone that comes after. That’s the vision he is given, the promise that the one he has been preparing, Joshua, would be ready to lead, that our job of leaving the safety of Egypt may not require the same talents as building a new life somewhere else. This, friends, is so embarrassingly obvious, isn’t it? But it requires letting go of our fear of not being enough and our desire to have it all. In short, it requires our trust in God.
With love,
Drew+
