I was already old when He called me. Too old, my wife Zipporah said; but you don’t say “no” to God – or at least you don’t finish with “no”. Now, Egypt was but a faint echo. Zipporah more distant, more remote. I brought the people out to this barren place. For forty years I prayed for deliverance, for forgiveness… but God’s “no” possesses a firmness I could not muster those many years ago. I would not cross over.
I started this trek early, before the dew and while the stars still clung to the sky. Standing on the mountain, I looked out over the valley. The hot wind off of the desert chafed on my skin, heated by the mid-morning sun. Soon the day’s fiery heat would bear down on me with a fierce blast. Once more into the furnace to fire away the abandonment, disappointment, and resentment that each passing day stoked within me. I strained to catch a note in the air. Perhaps a fragrance, the mere hint of a land, long promised, but denied to me. I was rewarded only with dry, lifeless, dust; dust that would soon claim me as its own.
I imagine the foregoing as how Moses must have felt at the end of his life. We think of a long life as a blessing, but it may not seem as such to someone who has spent so many of those years waiting. My mother, throughout my childhood, waited expectantly for the rapture and read a library of books identifying the Antichrist. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t King Juan Carlos of Spain. So it is now, with many Christians convinced that we are in the last days. However, every generation since the resurrection has been convinced that Jesus’ return was imminent. And it was imminent. And it is imminent. My mother, who died of cancer several years ago, has seen it. My father-in-law and mother-in-law, both having passed from this world, have seen it. Moses experienced the promised land, and his eyes are still not dimmed1. Such is God’s timing. All things will be fulfilled, and all things have been fulfilled.
1 Deuteronomy 34:7 And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
In a dry and thirsty land 