Acts 7:17-22. In his testimony before the council, Stephen moves on to the story of Moses. The patriarchs had moved to Egypt during the famine at the urging of their brother, Joseph. Their families, the tribe of Israel, grew and multiplied. But, "as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham," a new king who had not known Joseph arose in Egypt, and he treated the Jewish people badly, enslaving them and eventually forcing their infants to be exposed so they could be killed. At that time, Moses was born, "and was beautiful before God." When Moses was exposed, the Pharaoh's daughter found him and adopted him, raising him as her own son. "And Moses was instructed in the all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds."

The baby Moses was born to a death sentence, but he, like every child, was beautiful before God. God sees each one of us - He created each one of us. We are all beautiful before God. So even when we are born (or conceived) to a death sentence, God sees us and loves us. Every single Jewish baby who was killed, just like every single aborted baby in our time, was and is beautiful before God and had a purpose.

Moses' purpose is to be the savior of his people, but he doesn't know that yet. So far, all he knows is his Egyptian family, and he loves them as they do him. God made Moses the ultimate inside man. He was not a spy, nothing about his life with the Pharaoh's family was artifice, it was true and honest. He grew in Egyptian wisdom because he had been placed there by God to learn Egyptian wisdom. God intended Moses to know and love the Egyptians, just as God did, but He also intended to use Moses to show the Egyptians the evil of their ways, which required knowing and understanding their ways.

This is a very big and difficult mission, and so Moses is protected from knowing of it until the time is right. In the meantime, he is loved, cared for, and instructed in the ways of his peoples' enemies, becoming mighty in word and deed. This makes Moses better able to negotiate with Pharaoh when the time comes, but it also makes him empathetic. He has reason to try to persuade the Egyptians to let his people go, rather than to bring violence down upon them. He loves them, even though he is rightly opposed to them. He truly stands in God's place with them, and God got him there by making him the ultimate inside man.

Another thing that strikes me is that Stephen says that the Egyptians started treating the Jewish people as slaves and killing their children "as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham." Things got very bad for the Jews as God's promise came closer to fulfillment. That is a truth that we can see in many places in the Bible: Jesus' Passion and death had to precede his Resurrection; David had to be hunted by his former friend, Saul, before he could become king; the enslavement of the Israelites had to happen before they would be willing to follow Moses out into the desert to achieve their freedom.

This gives me comfort that the dire suffering that the world is going through right now foretells that the time of the fulfillment of God's promise is getting near. I feel very much that that is true!