Wed.’s Devo - Moses makes his Debut

Read Ex. 2:11-22 Moses grew up in the palace, but at heart, he was still a Hebrew. One day he went out to see how his people were being oppressed. He saw an Egyptian killing a Hebrew and after looking around to see if anyone was looking, he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. The next day he came back and saw two Hebrews fighting among themselves and went to them to ask why two brothers would fight. They became indignant and one of them replied, “Who made you a prince and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me like you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses realized that his secret was very public. It made it all the way back to the Pharaoh who sought to kill Moses. Moses escaped to the land of Midian which means “contention and strife”. (I thought that was what he was running from. Funny, how we can never run from our problems they just resurface until we deal with them.) Anyway, he sat down by a well which is a recipe for a new wife in the Old Testament. The priest of Midian had 7 daughters who happened to come to that well to draw water for their father’s animals. But, every time they tried to approach the well the other shepherds would run them off… until today. (If Moses couldn’t save his own brethren, maybe he could aid 7 helpless women trying to get water.) With Moses help their flocks were watered in record time and they returned home. When their father wondered how they returned so soon, they told him about the man they met at the well who chased the shepherds away and watered their flocks for them. Their father told them to go get Moses and invite him to stay with them. He gave Moses his daughter, Zipporah for his wife. Her name means “a sparrow”. Together they had a son named Gershom meaning “a stranger there” because Moses felt like a stranger in a land that was not his own. Ps 84:3 says that the sparrow has found a house - even the altars of the Lord of hosts. A sparrow is the offering of the poor of which Jesus said that one sparrow is important enough that God notes if it dies. I think that Zipporah saw herself as insignificant but God chose her to give her a house of faith and a family of renown. Most of us are like Zipporah who feel as important as a sparrow but it is because we, like Gershom, are a stranger living in a place that is not our home. In truth, we are important enough that God fashioned us out of his heavenly clay and set us in this alien land to sojourn and learn to abide in Him. Lord, help us to realize that we are only passing through but we can bring the kingdom of God down here.