art credit: caroline levis www.levisart.com, click image to veiw portfolio

According to rabbinic tradition and Acts 7, Moses tended sheep in the wilderness for forty years.  His first forty years were spent in a king’s palace.  His final forty years were spent leading a liberated, yet still grumpy people toward the Promised Land.  It’s the middle forty, the desert years, that seem pointless.  He got married, had some kids, and inhaled the smoke of a burning paote bush that led him to believe I AM WHO I AM was telling him to lead his people out of Egypt.  Forty years is a long time to listen to  sheep.  It is a long time to believe the words of a flaming bush.

What’s more is that God tells him the job he is preparing him to do will fail.  Exodus 4 paraphrased says, “You’re going to do all these miraculous things, but I’m going to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he won’t listen to you.  It’s not going to work.  It’s not you; it’s me.”  Encouragement like that probably made the octogenarian long to hear the bleating of sheep.