Acts 7:1, 17-29And the high priest said, “Are these things so?” 2 And Stephen said:
17 “But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt 18 until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph.19 He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants, so that they would not be kept alive. 20 At this time Moses was born; and he was beautiful in God’s sight. And he was brought up for three months in his father’s house,21 and when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. 22 And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.
23 “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel.24 And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian.25 He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.26 And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?’ 27 But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 At this retort Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
Once upon a time… What happens when you hear those words. Sweet memories of childhood bedtime stories? A sigh because someone is going to bore you to death with a fairy tale or fable? A perked-up ear and a keener interest in what character you are about to meet and the story to be told? Everyone loves a story. Well most people do at least. Give me a story over a list of facts any day. Or at least put the facts into the context of some story, some drama to be played out.
Stephen is giving answer to the high priest in the form of a story. It is interesting to me that he is allowed to tell his story. We are an impatient lot. We don’t often want to hear the story. We just want to get to the facts of the case so we can draw our own conclusions. Don’t tell me about your best cow Bessie. Tell me if you said you were OK at the time of the accident! [Recall this joke/post].
It seems that everyone is willing to listen to Stephen’s full story, a recounting of the saga of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the 12 sons of Israel. And Stephen is telling it. The story of God is not a single chapter. It’s not a simple, Once upon a time…and they lived happily ever after. It is a complex drama with many plot-twists, reversals, challenges, starts and stops.
That becomes clear in this second chunk of Stephen’s testimony: But as the time approached…until there arose…when he was exposed. All this is about Moses. Joseph is forgotten. The Israelites are growing in numbers and deemed to be a threat to the Egyptians. Time to clip their wings. Time to keep them from becoming too powerful. Put the Hebrew boys to death at their birth. Except Moses. He is beautiful in the eyes of God and will be protected from this genocide.
Moses will be threatened to be exposed for his vigilante action in defense of a fellow Hebrew, when he visited his fellow sons of Israel in Egypt. Word had gotten out about his actions and he had to flee to Midian. There he will become a father to two sons.
There is more to this story and as Stephen is telling it, the people must have wondered, What’s the guy getting at? Where is all this going? Is he just stalling for time? No. No. He is getting at how God works and how people can totally miss and reject God’s actions in favor of their own sense of the way things ought to be.
The final arbiter of what will be, and what ought to be, is not the sensibility of man, but the purposes of God. God’s purposes reach far beyond the momentary comfort or sensible actions of convenience we devise. Stephen’s defense will challenge them to the point of irate judgment and vigilante action of their own. They will stone Stephen. What will we do when God disturbs our sensibilities and twists the plot of our lives?
Better we be open to God’s ways and interruptions, and refuse to jump to conclusions about whether a moment in time is good or bad. The larger story of God’s ways ends in a grand celebration of his grace, goodness, justice, and love. These things we do not always see in the middle of the story. But until then, we can wait until the story comes to complete fulfillment.
David Bahn - Reflections 
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