That Moses sure had a lot of adventures
By LEON HALE Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 26, 2010, 6:18PM

At the supermarket I was in canned vegetables, looking for corn, when this lady came up and said hello, and asked if I've ever read the Bible.

She wore a little rain hat and a green coat and in her cart she had two six packs of diet soda and a big bunch of leeks.

Being asked in a supermarket if I've ever read the Bible was a new experience for me, but it wasn't the first time I've had a discussion in a grocery aisle about religion. It was just the first time this year.

Now and then, in the mail or in person, one of Houston's many evangelical churchgoers questions me about my religion. This doesn't really bother me. I understand that they feel obliged to recruit new sheep for the flock. I've had 'em say they're worried about me.

Well, I appreciate that. I'm pleased that somebody is worried about me, even though I'm not certain what I've ever written here that worries them so much.

Anyhow, when the lady in the grocery store asked if I've ever read the Bible I was able to tell her I have, and in fact reading the Old Testament is how I got one of my greatest heroes.

She said, “Oh? And who might that be?” and I told her Moses.

She said, “Moses?” And I said Moses, sure. And went on and mentioned a thing or two about why Moses has always interested me. That old prophet, he led a life, you couldn't cover his adventures in a four-hour movie.

I mean look how he began, floating down the Nile River in a basket, and not old enough to paddle. It's a marvel he wasn't snapped up by a crocodile before he floated 50 yards downstream.

And who rescued him? A young chick who just happened to be the daughter of the king of Egypt, and as a result of that rescue Moses grew up as an Egyptian prince. Not a bad trick, considering that this was a time when Jewish babies were being drowned at birth in Egypt.

You didn't want to mess with Moses when he was a young man. He would whack you. He once whacked an Egyptian dude who didn't recover and Moses had to get out of town. Ran off to a land called Midian and became a shepherd.

Now imagine this: You're out on the range, looking after a bunch of sheep, and God himself starts talking to you. That's what happened to Moses. I'm not making this up. You can read about it in the Book of Exodus. God told Moses to go back to Egypt and rescue the Jews who were held there as slaves.

Now here comes the snake adventure. I've admired this ever since I first heard it in about 1930. As a sign he was really the Almighty, God turned Moses' staff into a 7-foot snake. Then he told Moses to grab the snake by the tail.

Being of sound mind, Moses was scared stiff of that big snake. And yet he did it — he grabbed that snake's tail. Was that an act of faith, or not? When he touched it, the snake turned back into Moses' staff.

So off goes Moses to Egypt and along with his brother Aaron he spends years trying to get Pharaoh, the Egyptian monarch, to free the so-called children of Israel.

This was when the famous Ten Plagues of Egypt took place. I'm a long-time fan of these plagues. They add up to one of the wildest sets of catastrophes ever visited on humankind.

Moses stood by while God sent down a parade of major league troubles on Egypt. Hail. Flies. Locusts. Livestock diseases. Blood in the river. Death to babies. Boils on everybody's hide.

My favorite plague was the frogs. Frogs were everywhere, covering fields, buildings, streets. You couldn't take a step without hitting a frog. What a mess.

When Pharoah finally relented and let the Jews leave, the adventures of Moses were just beginning. He spent 40 years getting that crowd to the promised land, and in the end he didn't get to go there himself. I always counted that a raw deal.

There in the supermarket the lady in the green coat got away from me before I could ask her a question. I wanted to know how she intended to fix those leeks.

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