Blessed are...

Moses

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5

In a word association game, you would wait forever to place together ‘meek’ and ‘Moses.’ Our mental image of the leader of the Israelites, demanding of Pharaoh that he should “let my people go”[1] contains nothing of meekness as it is popularly understood. The man who led the Hebrews through the divinely divided waters of the Red Sea, or for forty years in the wilderness, does not seem to fit the description ‘meek.’ Yet, in Numbers we read that “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.”[2] The word that is used is ‘meek.’

It had not always been so. As a young man, Moses had been full of his own importance, rash and impetuous, given to angry outbursts. One day, unable to control his indignation at the mistreatment of a fellow Hebrew, Moses killed an Egyptian and hid the man’s body in the sand.[3] In trying to settle an argument, or in rescuing the seven daughters of Midian, Moses always tried to do things in his own strength. It took forty years in a desert place, tending to flocks, separated from his own people, before God molded Moses’ heart to His will. For forty years, Moses had time to consider the poverty of his spirit, and to grieve over his sins. Only then did he learn that true strength comes from submission to God.

True meekness requires that our pride be broken. When we are meek, we no longer take matters into our own hands, we place them into God’s. Our strength is not diminished, in fact it is enhanced as we learn to channel it appropriately. Moses learned this, and was still considered both the father of his nation’s freedom, and the humblest of men. He learned to turn from reliance upon self, and to rely totally upon his God. That is what it means to be meek.

Break me, mighty God, on the anvil of Your will.
Take my arrogance and my foolish pride;
take my willful heart and bend it to Your purposes.
May I be as clay in Your hands.
Like a potter, mold me into a simple vessel fit only to serve.
In the name of Jesus, the Servant-King.
Amen.



[1] Exodus 7:16
[2] Numbers 12:3
[3] Exodus 2:12