1. Moses

I count myself blessed for having been sent along to Sunday School as a child. One of the characters that kept cropping up in our lessons was Moses. Stories of him being put in a basket and hidden in the bulrushes, meeting with God at the burning bush and leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea and wandering in the wilderness are three among many that come to mind. In my teens, I remember reading a commentator make the point Moses spent forty years thinking he was a somebody, forty years learning he was a nobody and forty years experiencing how God could use a nobody, and was well impressed. Given how much is written about Moses, much of which is positive, for after all he is the major figure in four of the books of the Bible and is referred to in many more, we have no shortage of evidence of Moses’ qualities. Yet the fact he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land, despite being the one person more than anyone else, other than the Almighty, who had made it possible, only goes to show he had his human weaknesses and it was the high price he had to pay for his disobedience in the striking of the rock incident. After Moses had his God encounter, aged 80, while looking after his father-in-law’s sheep, putting aside his striking the rock, he was obedient in all what God told him to do, keeping faith and being faithful, even when the natural odds for the desired outcome and the going was getting tough with God delaying doing what He promised. While he could only get a glimpse of God’s backside, given he could not stand in the midst of His glory, he did in effect speak to God face to face and God confided in Moses in a way he has rarely otherwise done. He showed his compassion and was able to successfully intercede on behalf of Israel when God said He would cut them off because of their unbelief, notably in the worship of the Golden Calf incident. Perhaps the one thing that stands out among his many other qualities was Moses meekness, something that is often not highly regarded by human standards but is so important in God’s book.