“Moses was getting to know God as Jehovah-Rohi, his Shepherd. Like a shepherd, God would feed and lead Moses as he led the people of Israel. “I will be with you,” God said earlier. What music that must have been to Moses’ ears! He took thispromise by faith and thus was able to step confidently into his life purpose. “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young…” –Isaiah 40:11.”

“But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" And God said, "I will be with you." (Exodus 3:10-12). Moses is asking about his identity when he asks God: "Who am I?" In effect, he is saying, "Are you sending me back to the Pharaoh as an Egyptian prince, as a Jewish slave or as a Midianite shepherd?" This would have huge implications for the words he would use and the approach he woudl take in confronting Pharoah. What is intriguing to me is God never gives him an answer. He simply tells Moses to go and that his presence will be with Moses. God is affirming Moses' triculturalism: "I have created you the way you are, Moses. You are the person that I need for this task right now. Go and I will give you all that you need to accomplish what I have set before you." God uses us where we are, in all our complexity and confusion, especially in our ethnic identity, and does great and wonderful things through us.”

“In the nomadic age, the shepherd (nomeus) was the typical symbol of rule. In Statesman, Plato distinguishes the shepherd from the statesman: the nemein of the shepherd is concerned with the nourishment (trophe) of his flock, and the shepherd is a kind of god in relation to the animals he herds. In contrast, the statesman does not stand as far above the people he governs as does the shepherd above his flock. Thus, the image of the shepherd is applicable only when an illustration of the relation of a god to human beings is intended. The statesman does not nourish; he only tends to, provides for, looks after, takes care of. The apparently materialistic viewpoint of nourishment is based more on the concept of a god than on the political viewpoint separated from him, which leads to secularization. The separation of economics and politics, of private and public law, still today considered by noted teachers of law to be an essential guarantee of freedom.”

“I am thinking now of old Moses sitting on a mountain—sitting with God—looking across the Jordan into the Promised Land. I am thinking of the lump in his throat, that weary ache in his heart, that nearly bitter longing sweetened by the company of God...And then God—the great eternal God—takes Moses' thin-worn, thread-bare little body into His hands—hands into whose hollows you could pour the oceans of the world, hands whose breadth marked off the heavens—and with these enormous and enormously gentle hands, God folds Moses' pale lifeless arms across his chest for burial.I don't know if God wept at Moses' funeral. I don't know if He cried when He killed the first of His creatures to take its skins to clothe this man's earliest ancestors. I don't know who will bury me—...Of God, on whose breast old Moses lays his head like John the Beloved would lay his on the Christ's. And God sits there quietly with Moses—for Moses—and lets His little man cry out his last moments of life.But I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering I go back to these places where God met me and I meet Him again and I lay my head on His breast, and He shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of His breath, the power of His presence.”

“Moses had come to know God as Jehovah-shalom, the God of all peace. This is the deepest need of the human heart—to be at peace with God and with oneself. The proof that his heart was at peace was that it was filled with praise…not necessarily for what God had done, but for who God is. He was living out the chief end of man—-to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Psalm 29:11 says, “The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.”

“As gentle a man as he was, as tender as was his heart, there was nothing weak about Michael Hosea. He was the strongest-minded man Joseph had ever met. A Man like Noah. A Man like the Shepherd-king David. A man after God's own heart.”