I've been getting a double dose of Moses lately at church, since my pastor is preaching a sermon series from Exodus on Sunday mornings and our interim student minister is teaching about Moses on Wednesday nights. While reading through the text notes in Exodus in my favorite NIV Study Bible, I was reminded that 40 years passed between the time that Moses fled to the wilderness of Midian after killing the Egyptian and the transformative moment when the Lord spoke to Moses as he inspected the burning bush. Moses was 40 when he fled Egypt and 80 when he returned to carry out his God-given mission to deliver the Hebrew people from bondage. The four decades Moses spent herding stubborn sheep in the wilderness was good practice for the 40 years he would spend shepherding stubborn people in the wilderness.
As Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sagely observed, the waiting is the hardest part. But I am reminded that times of waiting are not inactive times - rather, they are periods when God is at work in our lives preparing us for the future.
"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope" (Psalm 130:5).
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