I was raised in a palace by a princess. Pharaoh was a grandfather to me. I ate the best foods, studied with the best tutors, owned toys and tools of the highest quality. I learned the sword and bow from the best. I spoke multiple languages, and wrote the first five books of the Bible.
I was a man of silk sheets, good food, good books, and oil lamps to read by. Don’t you agree that a “man of letters,” belongs in a city, sleeping near an open window letting in the desert’s cool night air?
But at 40, I killed an Egyptian and had to run. For forty years I was a fugitive, reduced to the humble life of a shepherd. At 80, God sent me home. I thought, “Great! I will sleep in a bed and eat fish from the Nile.” But the stay in Egypt was brief. Soon I was shepherding a million people across the desert.
Still, I knew the Promised Land was coming! This boy from the palace would not die in the desert. I would die with a roof over my head and a pillow under it! But then the people doubted God and He sentenced us to wander the desert ANOTHER forty years. Would I ever see another wheat field? Or private bathroom? Or the inside of a building?
No. The books I wrote, I wrote in tents. I never touched a thing I loved that did not have sand on it. Even light breezes blow sand into every crevice. How often did I crunch sand in my teeth while eating? God wanted me raised in a life of luxury. But He did not want me to remain there.
“By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward” Hebrews 11:24-26.
Sometimes God calls us away from the soft life. How many missionaries serve God in difficult, dangerous locations? Moses did not complain—and he did not enter the Promised Land. He did not die with a roof over his head.
But he died with a heart of faithfulness and gratitude toward God. May we do the same.
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