Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 2:21-22

21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.

22 And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

I wonder what sort of life Moses expected when he fled to Midian. I can only assume that he thought he would never return to Egypt, that he intended to start over with a new life in a new land. It makes sense, then, that he would take the daughter of the priest for his wife and settle down with a family.

However, he is still removed from this place in his heart. One would think that the birth of Moses’s son would be an event that might anchor him to this new life, but instead he used the moment to confess a lingering feeling of being “a stranger in a strange land.” Moses has been blessed with life, family, and home, but he does not belongs here. This will never be his place, and as we will see where he really belongs is with his people in Israel.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Who Am I?- Psalm 139:13-14 (ESV), Jeremiah 1:5

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

COMMENTARY

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee
The question of who we are must eventually come to terms with the truths proclaimed in these verses: that we are creations of God. I say “come to terms” because this notion of being someone else’s creation rubs against the grain of our modern culture. Each of us crave to be a self-made man or woman, one who doesn’t owe anything to anyone, someone who no one else has any claim on. To suggest that that we might be a creation offends a part of us.
But…it also makes another part of us very excited. For we also speak longingly of finding somewhere where we feel we belong, a calling that we were meant to fill, a situation that we were uniquely fitted for. But how do we belong, or are meant to fill, or are uniquely fitted, unless we were designed–created–by another to be so?
There is no shame in saying that we are another’s creation, but there is a humility in it.