Doing It the Hard Way

Imagine you’ve never heard the name Moses. You’ve never been to Sunday School. You’ve never seen the movie “The Ten Commandments.” You don’t know where this guy came from or what he did or how his story comes out. All you know is here’s a man who, if he’d stayed where he was and bided his time, might’ve been able to help his people using the Egyptian power at his control. He probably had the ear of Pharoah. He might’ve been able to influence him to give the slaves more food, work them less hard. Who knows? Given time, he might even have freed them, some of them anyway.

But he didn’t do that, i.e., not that way. If I understand his situation correctly, Moses had power and influence. I imagine he could’ve used these to free his people. In the movie, his Egyptian mother asks, “Cannot justice and truth be better served upon a throne?” I’d be surprised if Moses hadn’t asked himself the same question.

Of course, nobody knows for sure whether Moses was actually a contender for the throne of Egypt. But it’s plain that Moses turned his back on Egypt. He spurned whatever advantages his position might’ve afforded his people. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt.” In other words, he did it the hard way.

Those of us who’ve been raised on Moses have a hard time imagining him going the practical route; taking the less difficult, less dangerous way.

But we don’t have a hard time imagining that kind of a choice, do we? We make it all the time. How often do we choose the easy way?

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”