If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
18 January. Exodus chapters 1-3
The “second book of Moses” starts with the birth of the prophet, several generations after his people (by now called Habiru or Hebrews) arrived in Egypt, by which time they had become numerous but mostly working as forced labour and subject to a gender-selection policy by the ruler of the land. Moses is lucky – several women (his mother, the Egyptian midwife, his older sister, the Pharaoh’s daughter and her maid) all do their part in enabling him to have the privilege of a court upbringing. But he never forgot his roots.
Earlier this week was Martin Luther King day in the United States, a reminder of a man who by a combination of God-given talent and good fortune also overcame racial prejudice to achieve a high standard of education. He could have lived an easy life. Instead, he too never forgot his roots, but felt called as Moses did to challenge racism and slavery, to side with his oppressed people rather than their rulers, to “speak truth to power” as people say. Neither man was a “saint” in the popular sense of a gentle, peaceful person: Moses committed murder and King was, by all accounts, not an easy man to be with. But tackling injustice and evil, even in God’s name, demands a degree of determination and a willingness to suffer that do not sit easily with a gentle character. Each of these men heard the call of God to “set my people free”, and obeyed. Thank God for them both.