Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD ’s command.
After all that Moses had done, all he’d tried to do, the conclusion of his life is contained in this one sentence. It sounds like a second grader talking about a dog. And then he died.
Moses had come face to face with God. There’s something about Moses’ life that makes me think he’d have been able to enter the promised land, as opposed to just viewing it from a distance, and dying on that spot. At a minimum, there seems like there should have been more fanfare or story telling about Moses’ death.
I wonder why that is, why I think he should have been more glorified in his death. Maybe it’s because we all will die at some point, and we want to believe our absence will be felt.
And yet. And yet maybe it’s not in death that people should be remembered, but in life. Moses had a full, rich, complicated life that is very well documented in Scripture. The Bible is one of the world-wide best-sellers, so it’s likely a vast majority of humanity knows Moses’ name, if not his story.
It was Moses’ life that was worth celebrating. It was in his life that he came face to face with God. To be clear, Moses wasn’t without blemishes, but he still knew God face to face.
And more than the words of the Book, the life and actions of Moses live on through the stories and lives lived by people of faith throughout the world.
This morning, I’m thinking about a noteworthy life, rather than a noteworthy death.
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