Scripture Daily

Context No. 3826 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 7:26-34: in context

26“The day following, he appeared to them as they fought, and urged them to be at peace again, saying, ‘Sirs, you are brothers. Why do you wrong one another?’ 27But he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? 28Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29Moses fled at this saying, and became a stranger in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. 30“When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. 31When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight. As he came close to see, the voice of the Lord came to him, 32‘I am the God of your fathers: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Moses trembled and dared not look. 33The Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground. 34I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.’

In Stephen's retelling, Moses tries to help his own people but is rejected by them, who ask, who made you a ruler and a judge over us? and he flees into the wilderness of Midian, where he spends forty years as a stranger. His early attempt to deliver Israel had failed, and he seemed forgotten in the desert.

But God had not forgotten. After forty years, God meets Moses at the burning bush and calls him with words full of compassion: I have surely seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to deliver them. Two things stand out. God's timing is not ours; Moses waited forty years in obscurity before God called him, and the delay was part of the preparation. And the heart of God for the suffering: he sees, he hears, and he comes down to deliver. He is not distant from his people's affliction but attentive to it, and he acts to save. When we feel forgotten in our own wilderness, or when God's people suffer and heaven seems silent, this is our God: one who sees, hears, and comes down to deliver in his own time.

When I feel forgotten in a wilderness of waiting, or when suffering seems to go unnoticed, do I trust the God who sees, hears the groaning of his people, and comes down to deliver in his own time?

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