The Trouble with Looking Away
“One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.” Exodus 2:11–17
Sometimes the first evidence of a changed heart is that we can no longer ignore what we see.
Moses is an interesting character because his first attempts to confront injustice are hardly exemplary. His anger gets ahead of his judgment, and his actions have consequences.
Yet something about Moses refuses to accept the suffering of others as someone else’s problem.
There’s a meaningful application here about the cost of paying attention to people we’d rather not notice.
Something to prayerfully ponder today: What is the tension between seeing something wrong, wanting to intervene, and learning to act with wisdom rather than impulse? Are courage and good intentions enough?
