Lesson from Moses' life

I always knew that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament. I learned that fact when I was six or seven years old, sitting on a wooden chair in Sunday school.

"Moses wrote the Torah." It is filed away in my memory, along with an image of his little basket, bobbing in the bullrushes while the Pharoah's daughter bathed. But .... Moses, leader of the Israelites, managed to write the Torah. The wonder of that biographical fact dawned on me today.

I noticed for the first time that God commanded Moses to write. In Exodus 17:14, for example, He says, "Write [descibe, record] this as a memorial." Exodus 34:27 says, "Write thou these words." Moses received writing assignments from God.

I also noticed that Moses was pretty busy at the time! Dealing with grumblers. Teaching the Ten Commandments. Fighting off the Amalekites. He wrote the Torah anyway.

Perhaps my image of writer is formed by stories of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jane Austen, and Emily Dickenson, who lived quiet lives. Walked all day through fields of daffodils and gazed out quiet windows at brooding, windblown moors. Can't find the time to live in garrets and ponder daffodils? Well, too bad. A vaguely disappointed teacher you may become, but a writer you'll never be.

Moses' story challenges my assumptions. Takes some scales off my eyes. It teaches me that God asks all sorts of people to write, and some are fighting battles at the time. They write, even though they have no garrets, moors, or privacy.