Years of Obscurity

Then Moses was content to live with the man [Reuel], and he gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses. And she bore him a son. He called his name Gershom, for he said, "I have been a stranger in a foreign land."
~ Exodus 2:21-22 (NKJV)

Between the forty years Moses spent as a prince of Egypt and his forty years as Israel's leader are forty years of obscurity, summed up in the above two scant verses.

When Moses meets God in the burning bush at age eighty, he hardly sees himself as the Lord's spokesman and a nation's deliverer. But it had evidently taken God forty years to adequately prepare Moses and shape the foremost character quality needed for His servants:

Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.
~ Numbers 12:3 (NKJV)

Lord, please give us patience for the work You perform in us, trusting that You already know the plans You have for us and what is needed for days ahead.

"We should ever remember that those whom God uses much in public He trains in secret; and further, that all His most honored servants have been more occupied with their Master than with their work."
~ Charles H. Mackintosh

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