Excuse Me, Just Passing Through

I remember with raw clarity a taste of what it felt like to be homeless. My experience is certainly nothing compared to those who struggle with this reality day in and day out, and I don't want to take away from their stories. But there's something about that realization -- that thought that says: I have nowhere to call mine -- that weighs you down like a heavy blanket.

It was September 2003, and I had just gotten engaged the week before. The night Hurricane Isabel blew through our town, my roommate and I had gone over to my new fiancé's house to watch a late-night movie. We heard some wind, sure; thunder rolled, yep, rain rat-tat-tatted against the windows, true, but it didn't seem so out of the norm that we thought much about it. Driving home near midnight, we saw a few small branches littering the roadways. "It must have gotten pretty windy," I commented to my roommate in the passenger's seat next to me.

As I pulled into our driveway that led to our basement apartment, I slammed on the brakes. In front of me, where our front yard used to be, was a muddy, roiling lake. My roommates' car sat on top of the hill -- not where we had left it at the base of the driveway (which was now under water). The lights streamed out of the windows of our apartment, the door was open, and the water was nearly up to the door handle inside our apartment.

Our landlord and his family lived above us on the main floor of the house. They had been unable to reach us, so they'd rolled up their sleeves and gotten to work (bless them!). They'd set up folding tables inside and put as much furniture as they could on top of them. They'd found my roommate's keys and moved her car just about the time the water had reached the floorboards of her vehicle. Because of their hard work, we didn't lose everything. 

My couch was a throw-away mess, as was my bed and my roommate's bed. But the rest was mostly salvageable. That night was a long night as we turned around and headed back to my fiancé's house. We spent the night on the floor there, and the next day, moved what furniture we could to the basement of a friend's house. We couldn't return to our former apartment; it was too damaged. 

That following day, as I helped unload our furniture into our friend's basement, I felt a migraine setting in as the stress of the situation enveloped me; I remember lying on the couch for "just a minute," closing my eyes and letting the pain wash over me. My dear soon-to-be mother-in-law found some ice-packs and put them on my throbbing temples and prayed for me.

I didn't know what to do. I was an undergrad, taking classes, so I couldn't return home (this was before much distance-learning was being done). I had a work-study job that I couldn't bow out of. One minute, my life was normal, filled with normal situations (except getting engaged; that was super exciting), the next minute, my resting place, my home base, my landing pad, my foundation -- was uprooted.

Ever see a fallen tree? Not one that's been cut, but one that falls with roots still attached? The ground around it is a mess. The earth literally gets torn apart when the roots no longer hold it in place.

That's what I felt like. My firm earth was gone.

Exodus 2 covers a good bit of territory time-wise: 80 years all told. In 2:1, we meet Moses's parents. There's some debate about their identity. Many people believe them to be Amram and Jochabed (a man and his wife/aunt), but it's possible that Amram and Jochabed are a few generations removed, as well, based on the genealogy in Exodus 6.

Whatever the case, Moses's mother gives birth to him. "When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months" (Exodus 2:2). See, there's a mass genocide of baby boys happening all around her (an interesting foreshadowing of Jesus' birth story). Perhaps if Moses had been sickly or unwell, she might have given him over to Egyptian soldiers; I don't know. I would hope she would have fought for her babe no matter what, but I think this verse helps us understand just a taste of the danger she was putting her husband and other two children in by making the decision to try to fool Pharaoh: probable death for the whole family if she is discovered. No matter what she decides, she can't have made the decision lightly.

For three months, she keeps him hidden, but he's getting bigger, and his cries are getting stronger and louder. She'll have to do something. So she weaves a basket for him and coats it in tar and pitch. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for this basket is used in only one other place in the Scriptures: Noah's ark, which carries the last man in the world and his family out of destruction and into new life.

Moses's mother sets him afloat among the reeds of the Nile River and tells his sister Miriam to keep an eye on the basket. Miriam does. As the basket floats in the waters, the Pharaoh's daughter (possibly the 18th century dynasty princess who later becomes Queen Hatshepsut) comes out to take a bath. When she gets in the water, she hears a baby crying, sees the basket, and sends her slave girl to get it.

She opens the basket and sees the baby. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she says. And she feels sorry for him.

Miriam, the opportunist, runs up to seize the golden moment. "Hey, Princess, I just happen to know a Hebrew woman who can nurse this baby for you. Should I go get her?"

"What a coincidence," the Princess says. "Sure."

And so Moses's mother gets to be the one to nurse her baby boy after all, but this time under the protection of the king's own household, because Pharaoh's daughter -- when Moses is weaned -- takes him home as her own son. Prince Moses.

Prince Moses has lost his home. That's not to say he doesn't feel at home in the Egyptian court. Perhaps he feels as Egyptian as it is possible to feel. But the facts don't change; he is Hebrew, and he is not amid his people. He's a stranger in a strange land.

When Moses is 40, he sees an Egyptian slave-master beating a Hebrew. And he's angry. We have no way of knowing how much of his origins he has been told, but maybe he recognizes that he doesn't look quite like the Egyptians around him. Or maybe his Egyptian mother has told him how she found him and made him part of her family. Either way, something about the oppressed and brutalized Hebrew appeals to his sense of justice, and he decides to do something about it. He looks around, doesn't see anyone watching, and he kills the Egyptian slave-master, burying him in the sand.

By the next day, word is out. Moses is walking around, as a prince does, and he sees two Hebrews fighting. Again, his sense of justice is aroused (Moses would make a good judge, don't you think? Foreshadowing), and he peels the fighters off each other. "Break it up!"

One Hebrew looks angrily at him. "Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?"

Gulp. They know.

This is where -- if this were a movie -- the dark, minor notes in the soundtrack would slowly merge with the theme to bring in threat and menace. "When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian."

Midian is along the eastern seaboard of the Red Sea. It's dry, desolate, and as desert as desert can be -- a stark contrast from Moses' first 40 years living on the banks of the Nile in the resplendent palace of the Egyptian king.

There, Moses sits down by a well. The daughters of one of the Midianite priests come to water their flocks, and as they do so, a group of bullying shepherds comes at the same time. The bullies try to run off the girls. 

Moses, vigilante for justice (see Egyptian slave-driver paragraph above), tosses his superhero cape over his shoulder, adjusts his superhero mask, and saves the day. He drives off the shepherds, and then to add to his avenger-of-all-wrongs persona, he waters the girls' flocks for them.

Naturally, one of the girls, Zipporah, marries him. When they have their first son, they name him Gershom, which means: "An alien there." And Moses says: "I have become an alien in a foreign land." The New Life Version says: "I have become a stranger in a strange land."

This morning, I realized, Moses never does find his home, the place where we might say: "THIS. This is where Moses belongs." I remember crying when I was a young child reading this story. To me, Moses' home was supposed to be with his mother and his father and his sister and his brother. But that gets taken away from him by the cruel orders of a tyrannical king. So he has to grow up in someone else's home, taken away from his mommy.

Moses, a Hebrew among Egyptians, never quite fits. And when Pharaoh tries to kill him, he runs away to live for another 40 years in a desert far from everything he knows, amid people who are not his people. All of this is reflected in his first son's name: Gershom, "An alien there," and Moses's statement: "I have become an alien in a foreign land."

Eventually (spoiler), Moses will return to his people, but they are all displaced. They are all strangers in a strange land, and his job will be to lead them back to their homeland... but he won't get to go in. His whole life will be one of seeking, but never reaching.

How heart-breaking is that?

But it underlines this for me: This world is not my home. I am always a stranger in a strange land. My roots are always out of the ground. My residence is always transitory, impermanent, unsteady. 

Because my home is not here. 1 Chronicles 29:15 says: "We are foreigners and strangers in Your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow..." and Psalm 119:19 says: "I am a stranger on earth; do not hide Your commands from me."

This past weekend, I packed up the house where I spent all my growing up years, and I cleaned it for the last time. As I walked through the empty rooms -- while I was heartbroken to leave it -- I realized: my home, my nationality, my allegiance is in the courtroom of heaven, and that's my final resting place. 

Moses knew it, or learned it, and I hope I have learned it, too.