Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone.”
Exodus 18:17-18 NIV
I know a couple who both just retired. They are still young, especially to be retired, and they still have lots of life left in them. The question is—what to do with it? What do you do when you have always been known by your career—by what you do? What is left when all is stripped away?
It is so easy to find our worth in our career, by what we do, even if we are someone who doesn’t work outside the home. We try to find our value in external things; the volunteer position, the type of the home we keep, the number of homemade meals we prepare. Usually it goes far beyond this. In today’s day and age, we often are busy working our day jobs, running around to different activities, rushing home to prepare an all-organic, gluten-free, dairy-free, superfoods-type meal, and then we hurry to clean everything up in order to do more work—be it a side hustle or a house project, and then we fall, exhausted, into bed. This is not how we were meant to live. We end up doing too much in some sort of contest to prove our self-worth.
This happened in the Bible with Moses too. Talk about having everything stripped away! He went from rags to riches, back to rags, and to riches again! Moses was born into an enslaved Israelite family, who, in an effort to save his life, was sent floating in a basket down the Nile River. Being found by the pharaoh’s daughter, he is raised in the pharaoh’s court as a prince. When he was grown, Moses killed an Egyptian when he saw the Egyptian beating a fellow Israelite. He then fled into the desert, where he became a shepherd with a nomadic people. Doesn’t that sound like the storyline of so many movies—the broke young person who works their way to the top, becomes a powerful executive, and then throws it all away to go live a simple life? But then things change for Moses.
While Moses was shepherding his flock he came across a bush that was burning but it was not consumed. God speaks to Moses through the bush and tells him to deliver His chosen people, the Israelites. Moses doesn’t want to go but finally he listens and goes to Egypt. A lot happens there; eventually Moses makes it back out of Egypt with all the Israelites. He is a leader, the judge of all disputes, the spiritual leader, and basically all things to all people. He is talking of this to his father-in-law, Jethro, when Jethro stops Moses and tells him that he is doing too much. Jethro tells Moses he needs to delegate. Moses listens to Jethro’s advice and sets up a judicial system.
I think maybe Moses got carried away doing too much in effort to make up for his past wrongs, both perceived and legitimate. He killed an Egyptian—strike one. Then he fled to the wilderness abandoning his people—strike two. Maybe another reason he didn’t want to go back to Egypt is because he didn’t want to hear the Israelites accuse him of not caring about them. After all, he did leave! He escaped Egypt like so many of them wanted to do but couldn’t. Maybe Moses was eager to prove himself so he took on all the responsibilities that he could to try to make up for it.
But Moses had someone to call him out. He had someone to remind him that godliness isn’t busyness. And what’s more . . . Moses listened. He accepted the counsel of a trusted friend and mentor. He took a step back to look at what God had really called him to do and let the rest go. Moses seemed to know that when all is stripped away, it wouldn’t matter because he found his worth in God.
Do we find our worth the same way? If confronted as Jethro did to Moses, would we be humble enough to realize that very few roles are ones that only we can fill? Would we have the wisdom to relinquish control and get back into the sphere to which God has called us? When all is stripped away, would we be happy with what remains?