Moses, The Man Without A Country

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Exodus 2:16-22

16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock. 18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” 19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. 22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”

 
 

So, Moses ends up in Midian, an region outside of Egyptian territory, on the other side of the Red Sea in the area of the upper Arabian peninsula. He is nowhere and has no identity. Note that the women think he’s Egyptian! Are they wrong? Who is Moses? What he names his son—“stranger”—is revealing: Moses is a man without a country.

This lack of clear identity will be important when the Lord calls and commissions Moses. He will receive his identity from God—he’ll be God’s man.

I think that each of us feels at times that we don’t fit, that we’re not totally at home. But what if this isn’t a bad thing? What if a sense of rootlessness can set us up to hear from God?