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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
If you’ve ever been stuck in the slowest line at the grocery store, you know a little of what Moses felt. Forty years of leading Israel through the wilderness was like being trapped behind a customer with 20 coupons, a cart full of melons, and a personal chat with the cashier. Just when you think you’re finally getting out, the lane closes. Moses led the people for forty years, through wilderness, disasters, rebellions, and at the end, God shows him the Promised Land from a mountaintop and God says, “Beautiful, isn’t it? But “You will not enter it. Thank you very much, Now Joshua will take it from here.”
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Holy lives of inspiration | Why pray?
There is something interesting about how we remember things. When I was a child, we had a steel trunk under the bed, packed with old clothes, letters, books, old silverware, and photographs. On some days, my mother would open it, sit on the floor, and start pulling things out: a yellowed shirt, a broken pair of spectacles, a letter written in ink so faded it looked like fog. Every time she opened it, we kids would groan, “Not again!” because we knew we were about to sit through another episode of The Dusty Chronicles, staring at silverware from 1972. But she’d sit on the floor like a museum curator, holding up the silverware, “Shhh… This is who we are.” She wasn’t preserving junk. She was preserving meaning.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Why pray?
A sunrise or a sunset over still water. The silence before a symphony begins. A child laughing in sleep. A blessing whispered from the deathbed. These are moments that do not ask to be explained. Only received. These are not events to be intervened, but mysteries to be knelt before. The Transfiguration is one such moment. The mountain is where the veil thins, where the ordinary gives way. “Mountains in Scripture are never destinations, they are thresholds. From Sinai to Tabor, they are where God speaks so we can descend changed. The climb is not about escape, but a preparation for everything waiting below.”
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Holy lives of inspiration | Why pray?
Today’s first reading includes one of the more painfully honest moments in Moses’ leadership journey: “I cannot carry all these people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.” We don’t get the grand miracles, the parting of seas, or thunder from Sinai. No, today we get Moses at his wit’s end, exhausted, frustrated, and frankly, ready to resign. This might be the first recorded case of clergy or leadership burnout. This might be the most relatable passage in all of Scripture for anyone who's ever had to lead a group trip, a parish committee, or even wrangle hungry kids at dinnertime. The Israelites are in the wilderness, and what are they doing? Complaining. Loudly. “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt… the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic!” It's like someone handed them a review for their time of slavery in Egypt: “Two stars, poor working conditions, terrible boss, but the food was great.” They’re nostalgic for oppression, simply because the food there had better sauce and seasoning.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
It’s another ordinary day. Moses is doing what he’s done for the last forty years, herding sheep in the wilderness. There’s nothing exceptional. Just a man, a stick, and some wooly animals. And then, a bush catches fire but doesn’t burn up. And with it, everything changes. Now pause for a second. Isn’t that how God works? Not with trumpets and fireworks, but in the middle of your Tuesday afternoon laundry, or your commute, or in the ache of an unresolved prayer. Moses wasn’t looking for God; he was looking for a lost sheep. But the burning bush found him.
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Holy lives of inspiration | Learn more about our faith
Let me introduce you to Jochebed, mother of Moses from the first reading. No burning bush, no Red Sea yet. Just a woman, in a time of terror, doing what mothers do best: protecting life in the face of death. Pharaoh, in all his regal might, had issued a royal decree: every Hebrew baby boy must be drowned in the Nile. And what does Jochebed do? She looks at her newborn son, sees something “special” in him, and let’s be honest, what mother doesn’t think her child is special? But Jochebed’s faith isn’t just sentimental, it’s strategic. She hides him for three months, then weaves a basket, like a tiny ark, places him in it, and lets him go into the very river meant for his death. That’s not fear. That’s Trust You know what strikes me most? Jochebed never hears a voice from heaven. No angel appears with a five-point plan. She has no assurance this will work. All she has is maternal instinct and mustard-seed faith. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.
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