IT WAS AN ARID DAY The dry, balmy breeze cooled the lonely shepherd as he sat quietly upon the grassy knoll watching his flock graze lazily in the sun.

It had been forty years now. So long ago and yet it seemed in one way just like yesterday. At times the memory of Pharaoh's courts was like a story so far in the past that he could scarcely remember the detail. At other times it seemed so vivid he had to pinch himself to be sure he wasn't still there.

How could he have ever thought that he would be able to deliver his beloved people from the cruelty of Egyptian slavery! Sometimes at the thought his heart would still break in sorrow because of his people's suffering. At other times the circumstances of his shepherd life, the remoteness of the wilderness, the cares of his family, the peace of the pastoral scenes that surrounded him caused such thoughts to be so remote that they were virtually nonexistent.

Today the memory replayed vividly in the sanctuary of his mind. Just now he was thinking of the times when as a boy he would slip away from the palace, without Pharaoh's daughter knowing it and visit with his father and mother, his brother and sister. There he would sit and listen for hours of the story of his birth and his miraculous escape from certain death in the Nile River.

"Why was I in the Nile River in a basket, mother?" he would ask again and again. Over and over his mother would give him the same answer.

"The Hebrew people had grown mighty in number since they had been in the land of Egypt, "she would explain. "In fact they had become so great that Pharaoh was afraid that if war broke out we might join his enemies and escape from Egypt. So Pharaoh ordered that all the male babies be thrown into the river. I could not bear to see that happen. So I hid you as long as I could, then I made a little basket, put you in it and put it in the reeds along the bank of the Nile. When Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe, she saw the basket and opened it and found you. She couldn't bear the thought of you being left to die, so she took you home to Pharaoh's palace to be her own son. "

"Never forget, my son, the deliverance of God. I am sure that He saved you for a purpose. The time is drawing near for the fulfillment of the promise that God gave to our father Abraham."

"What was that promise, mother?" Moses would always ask in boyhood curiosity.

"Our father Abraham had been speaking with God all day when toward the end of the day he prepared an altar unto the Lord and laid the sacrifice upon it. As the sun was setting Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, 'Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.' Then when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the sacrifice. On that day the Lord made a covenant with our father Abraham and promised to give his descendants a land flowing with milk and honey."

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