I love the midwives. Ordered to kill some babies? Yeah, that’s not happening. Those women totally just give birth in the fields! I mean, sure, I’d rather anger the king than God, but these women spent their lives bringing children into the world. I like to think the question of who is more powerful didn’t even enter in to it. It’s just a no. That’s not what we do here.
And Miriam. She wanted to know what was going to happen to her little brother. Was she asked to watch him? Did she decide to watch him on her own? I have always been impressed by the little girl who boldly exposed herself to Pharaoh’s daughter and volunteered to go get someone to feed the baby. She managed to keep that baby in his mother’s life for a little while longer by speaking up.
We don’t get to know much about Miriam, and, like everyone else, she makes some mistakes later in her life. But here she is, boldly caring for her family. I wish we got to know her better, some of her other triumphs, some of her character in other situations. How did she handle the plagues when her brother comes back to lead them out?
And then we have Moses. How outside he must have felt. He wasn’t Egyptian. He knew he wasn’t Egyptian. He killed an Egyptian for mistreating an Israelite. Was it premeditated? Was he just trying to get him to stop? Or did he feel as though he had to go so far as to kill the man so he couldn’t tell on him for defending the slave? For that matter, how badly was the guy treating the Israelite to inspire that extreme response?
And how much more outside must he felt afterward. He had the biggest secret you could have pushing him further away from the Egyptians. But the Israelites don’t want him, either. They aren’t thankful for his intervention. If anything, they reject him even more for it than they did for his place in the palace. Talk about being trapped between two worlds. Maybe he ran away because he was afraid for his life, but think of how relieved he must have been to find a place with Jethro. He was taken in. He was given a wife, a family. He actually belonged somewhere.
That is what he was called out of to free his people. I’ve heard sermons and lessons about how difficult it must have been to return to Egypt, but I don’t know that I’ve heard anyone speak of how difficult it must have been to leave the home he’d found.
When God calls you out of your comfort zone and into a situation where you don’t feel you belong, what will your answer be?