Seasons: Waiting and Preparation

We left Moses after he murdered an Egyptian.  As the story continues Pharaoh hears of the murder and tries to seize Moses and kill him for murdering an Egyptian.  To save his skin, Moses flees to Midian.

While a sin with life-long consequences, I suggested that Moses' life up to this point was a season in which God fashioned a man who would share his passion for the Israelites and share God's anger at their slavery.

But that wasn't enough.  Rarely is.


I often find myself passionate about something.  Are you that way - a new idea, a new life goal, an injustice you stumble upon in the news?  Passion isn't enough, though, to make a change.  One needs a plan and the leadership skills to execute it.  One usually doesn't realize this when passion sets in...

And so we follow Moses to the desert, where he marries someone from a different culture and settles down to tend sheep.  At this point, the passionate youth who committed murder is either regretful and beginning to chalk his actions up to mis-directed zeal, or is frustrated that while he enjoys a quiet routine his Israelite brothers and sisters continue in slavery.

Are you in a season of throwing in the towel on some unrealized passions?  

Passions that perhaps you acted on in ineffectual ways?  Maybe even passions that seemed good and right on paper but led you to sin?  Are you in a routine that seems to have nothing to do with youthful longings?  Maybe you're passionate about something that there is no room in your life to pursue.

Be encouraged by Moses' story:

"Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.  Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying 'I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.'
During that long period, the king of Egypt died.  The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.  God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and Jacob.  So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them." Exodus 2:21-25

During a season when Moses was regretting and stuck in a rut, God was remembering.  

And as God remembered He continued to shape Moses into a leader who could shepherd God's people.  Moses, as a husband, learns how to live alongside someone raised differently than himself, an ability that will be useful when this Pharaoh-raised man returns to Egypt and presents himself to the Israelite slaves as one of them.  He parents a son, and begins what will be life-long habits of repeating the rules, redirecting and life-long feelings of exasperation mixed with great love.  He will spend his days leading sheep through the desert.  Are the implications obvious?  Need to find water in a desert? Moses is your man.  Need to know which mountains to climb and which to bypass?  Moses is your man.  Need to coral, protect, feed and guide an obstinate group who can't navigate the desert on their own?  Moses is your man.

Are you, like Moses, in a season of preparation?  Not sure?  Often it masquerades as a season of nothing.  A season of waiting.  A season of going nowhere.  A waste of time.  A wrong direction.  

Anything sounding familiar?  If so, relax into the waiting.  Remember that what feels like a rut to you may well be God's time of remembering.  A time when God, slowly but surely, is moving important pieces into play.  When a passion prepares to launch.  God doesn't forget about our passions.  He shapes them; He matures them; He plans to use them.  He remembers.