Walking with Moses from slavery to liberation
When Moses says “keep still,” he’s not recommending inactivity.
I have been thinking a lot about Moses, about bondage and liberation and what it looks like to imagine one’s life apart from the lens of an oppressive regime. Somehow, Moses is drawn from a space of death into privilege, then into the wilderness, and then into the throes of a liberation movement. It’s all miracles and power and bags full of gold—until he and the Israelites hit that watery obstacle and hear Pharaoh’s army behind them.
How did we get here? I imagine this question coursing through Moses’ body at this moment. This is hardly the glory Moses might have imagined when he first heard that voice coming from a burning bush. But Moses calls out to the people with the only promise he knows: “Be still.”
While we might associate Moses with power and wonder, in actuality he is rather ordinary. As he stumbles into being used by God, his most evident quality might be his unknowing. But being ordinary is not the same as being without purpose or possibility. And Moses’ life has already been speaking.
