Today’s scripture: Exodus 3:13-15 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (Tyler Connoley):
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”
To understand the importance of this statement, you need to know something about Moses’ story up to this point. He was born at a time when the Children of Israel were terribly oppressed. They were forced to work for other people as slaves living in work camps. Even worse, the government had decided to kill some of them to keep the population down — sort of a pest control project — and had ordered the execution of vast numbers of children.
In order to keep him safe, Moses’ mother had organized things so he could be adopted by an Egyptian woman, the king’s daughter. Hired as his nurse-maid, Moses’ mother told him stories of his people, and sang him the songs of his people, so he would know who he really was. However, you can imagine that he had a pretty severe case of identity crisis by the time he was a young adult. Was he Egyptian, the grandson of the King? Or was he one of the Children of Israel, as his nurse/mother told him he was?
One day, while Moses was out walking and perhaps thinking about his own questions about his identity, he saw an Egyptian man abusing one of the Children of Israel. In a fit of rage, Moses killed the Egyptian. He was trying to remember who he was, but in the process he committed an act of violence that required forgetting his own humanity — his true identity and the true identity of the other man as fellow children of God.
Moses thought no one had seen, so he hid the body. But the next day he was angry with someone else, and that man said to him, “Are you going to kill me like you did that Egyptian?” Afraid for what people knew about him, Moses ran. He ran to forget who he was, and so others would also forget. He ran as far as he could from civilization as he knew it, out into the desert. There he met a woman who was not an Egyptian or from the Children of Israel, and he married her, obliterating the final connections he had to who he was.
So, when Moses saw the burning bush in the desert, and God spoke to him, he was a man with an identity crisis. He didn’t know who he was, much less who this God was who was talking to him. Then the Voice from the bush told him to go back to his adopted grandfather the Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go.” Think about that phrase: Grandpa, let my people go. Talk about an identity crisis!
I believe it was in this context that God said to Moses the words he needed to hear: “I am who I am.” This is naturally understood as a message about God, that God is beyond any name and simply is. However, it was also a message that Moses needed to think about for himself. I am who I am. Beyond all the labels and confusion of identity, Moses was who he was. Not a son of a princess, not a child of Israel, not a murderer, and not the husband of a desert dweller, but simply a human being called by God. I am who I am.
Thought for the day: As you go through the next day, focus on this phrase: I am who I am. Rest in the knowledge that God is greater than any name you can place on God. Also remember that you are who you are, and that is enough.
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.