The Mountain Where Moses Said Goodbye

Do you remember Moses?

The baby in the basket. The boy God kept safe. The man at the burning bush, who stood in front of the biggest king in the world and said, "Let my people go."

For forty long years he led God's people through the wilderness. Forty years of sand and grumbling and bread from heaven every morning. Forty years of walking, and waiting, and walking some more.

And all that long time, there was a place up ahead. A good land. A land where the rivers ran cool and the grapes grew fat and heavy, and no one would ever be hungry again. God had promised it. Home was coming.

Moses wanted to walk into that land more than anything in the world.

But by now Moses was very old. And God said to him, "Climb the mountain, Moses. Climb up high, and I will show you the land."

So Moses climbed.

Up and up, until the whole wide world spread out beneath him. And God pointed. "Look. There it is. The land I promised. See how far it stretches. See how green. See how good."

Moses looked. With his own two eyes, he saw it. The home he had walked toward his whole long life.

And then God told him the hard thing. "But you will not go in."

After all that walking, after all that climbing, Moses stood looking at the good place shining and close, and knew his own feet would never touch it.

Moses did not get to finish.

He stood on the mountain and saw the promise. But the promise was for tomorrow, and his tomorrow had run out. So Moses lay down on the mountain, and God himself buried him there, gently, the way you tuck in someone you love. And no one ever found the place.

I think that is the saddest goodbye in the whole story so far.

But the story did not stop on that mountain.

The people did go in. God had not forgotten them. He had been gathering a family the whole long way, and he would not come home missing a single one. Someone new would lead them through the river and into the land.

And further on, much further, another Leader was coming. One who would not stop at the edge and only look. One who would walk all the way in, and carry his whole family with him. Every last one.

His name is Jesus.

Moses saw the home from far away. Jesus came to bring his people inside it, into a land better and greener and gladder than anything Moses glimpsed from that mountaintop. A home where no one is left at the edge, where no goodbye is the last word, where the gladdest days still lie ahead.

One day Jesus will open the door of that home, take his family by the hand, and walk them all the way in.