By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.
Hebrews 11:27 (NIV)
He Saw a Person
Year six. She hasn’t known who he is since the spring before last, and three different people have told him, kindly, that she doesn’t take in what he says.
He tells her about his day anyway. Twenty minutes, most evenings, the boiler man and the car and what the neighbor did about the tree. He would tell you straight out that it isn’t a principle. He isn’t keeping faith with an idea about sons and mothers; he is talking to her, and she is the one he is talking to.
By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. Moses saw a him. You argue with a him and you follow him into a desert, and Hebrews gives that seeing as the reason a man kept going.
The way this one gets quoted at people, as if Moses had worked out a technique for looking past whatever is in front of him, wears me out.
You can be loyal to a principle for a while, and a principle stays where you leave it. It asks nothing on a Tuesday and it lets you off on a bad week, because there is nobody in it. Moses went on the strength of one who had spoken to him, who was doing something about Egypt, and who expected to be followed.
Invisible tells you about the limits of a pair of eyes and nothing about who is there. The one Moses saw was awake the whole time and had a plan running, and Moses had that to go on and nothing else, and it had to hold for as long as a man lives.
That is where the two of them part company, and it’s worth saying out loud rather than stepping over. He talks to a woman who takes nothing in. Moses went on the strength of one who was taking all of it in, who answered him, who argued back with him. What Hebrews says about Moses is that he had more to go on than he could see, not less.
He walked out on a king’s anger, and he kept walking, because he saw one nobody else could see.
Twenty minutes, most evenings. Tonight it’s the boiler man again, because the part came and it was the wrong part.
A Prayer to Remember
Show me yourself in whatever way a living person gets to see you, God. I believe you’re here on the days I can’t tell that you are, and the telling is what I’m short of. Give me enough of you today to walk into tomorrow on.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
