Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: JOURNEY (01/13/22)
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TITLE: It was Quite a Trip... | Previous Challenge Entry
By Noel Mitaxa
01/20/22 -
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How many times did I hear that cry? But those complaining never knew the pressures – or the delays I had to deal with – before our big adventure started.
It was a big call for my brother and me to keep going to the king’s palace, offering him a new economic and employment structure that would free people to pursue new horizons. But he wasn’t listening.
Slavery must have its benefits – if you’re not a slave. Not paying the workforce who are constructing monumental public works and infrastructure is an easy way to keep unemployment and inflation under control, especially if it has been that way for four hundred years. So, who were we to suggest any alternative?
But if this workforce has no citizenship rights, it doesn’t sit well with God, and I’ll never forget how the big call came my way.
As farm and livestock manager, head ranger and fire chief, I’d noticed a fireball in a shrub. Forty years of experience alerted me that it could easily have spread quickly, but it somehow stayed put.
I’d hurried over to investigate, when God stopped me and related his plan for me to release the slaves.
Who, me?
Who else? My first forty years had been spent rubbing shoulders with Egypt’s rich and powerful, so I knew their system. But I wasn’t convinced until God told me that my brother Aaron would be my 2IC.
We quickly became aware of the king’s reluctance, for he kept increasing the slaves’ load – and their heartaches.
But God launched some heavy persuasion – unleashing nine plagues in turn: water turning to blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness that was so thick it was tangible. Though Egyptian gods were supposed to control each of those areas, God was showing his greatness over them all.
None of those upheavals hit the slaves, which hardened the king’s attitude even more. Until the tenth one, which killed every firstborn Egyptian child. Then he finally relented – and we made our way east towards the Red Sea, where yet another miracle was waiting...
With cliffs of water soaring above us on either side, until we had all made our way through, we had a spectacular crossing along the seabed. Then, as the king’s army gave chase, the waters closed over them!
Finally, after three months of bread literally falling from heaven each morning and flocks of quail to eat each evening, we reached Mt Sinai. I had heard God’s voice at that bush fireball, but this was where God revealed himself to me. But only his back, or it would have been fatal for me. Yet even this glimpse got my face shining – to many people’s alarm...
After four hundred years of slavery, nobody had any idea of personal freedom, or of personal or social responsibility. Which is why God dictated to me his ten pointers for effective living – as individuals and as a new nation. I’ve since seen most freedom-loving countries around the world adopt these pointers as a legal base, though sadly, this base is lately being corroded by those who should be upholding it.
It wasn’t easy to lead so many people with such short memories – as if slavery was better than making our way towards the land God had promised.
Despite the regular miracles God sent our way, people kept complaining, and their lack of faith meant our holding funerals for all. Except for Joshua and Caleb. Their visionary reports were quashed by the others who had spied out the Promised Land with them from Kadesh Barnea, and whose fears had won the people over.
Had everyone listened to Joshua and Caleb, we could have taken only two weeks instead of forty years to enter the Promised Land. Yet God was not surprised, because my four decades of farming the whole wilderness area had made me familiar with watercourses and where we might graze our cattle. So, we could keep going despite the enemies who tried to stop us.
God barred my entry to enter that land, because my petulant tantrum at a water-laden rock had publicly shown my own brittleness.
Yet from the height of the cliffs at Mt Nebo, when he showed me its amazing panorama, I knew that Joshua was God’s man as Israel’s new leader.
Was God unfair, that I never entered this Promised Land?
Who knows, but I can’t complain about my accommodation for the last three-and-a-half millennia.
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Your entry was not only on topic but offered an enthralling message from the "journal" of Moses mind encapsulating the book of Exodus.
Well done!
Blessings~