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You’re Not the Main Character
Moses learned it the hard way. You don’t have to.
Addison Collingsworth
December 05, 2025
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Moses Striking the Rock by Corrado Giaquinto (1703-1765). Edited by Bryan Arcebal
They were at it again.
Endless complaining.
Continual in-fighting.
Never content.
Moses stood alone, eyes straining with exhaustion, heart heavy.
He had heard these cries before, but something about today irked him more than usual.
The people were thirsty. Again.
And it was “his” fault. Again.
Never mind parting the Red Sea.
Never mind the daily manna from heaven.
Never mind God’s fire and cloud guiding them.
They looked at Moses as if none of it mattered.
As if he had dragged them into the desert to die.
“What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
He turned his face away, muttering under his breath.
What more could he do?
What else could possibly convince them?
He had stood between their rebellion and God’s judgment more times than he could count.
He had fought their battles, borne their whining, and carried laws etched by Yahweh’s own hand down from the mountain.
Still they blamed him.
Still they longed for Egypt.
Moses snapped.
“Listen, you rebels! Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?!” (Numbers 20:10)
Without a second thought, Moses raised his staff and struck the stone twice.
Water gushed out.
The people drank.
The show moved on.
But heaven went quiet.
Later, in private, Yahweh spoke plainly:
“Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”
Just like that, his role was recast.
After decades of faithfulness, he wouldn’t get to lead them into the Promised Land.
Moses tried to be the one who made the water flow.
The one who provided.
The one who saved.
He forgot whose story this was.
The Weight of the Spotlight
The thing about playing the lead is that the burden always falls on you.
That was the pressure Moses lived under:
He had to keep the people moving.
He had to carry their hopes.
He had to lead confidently because the moment things slowed, they turned on him.
He knew this was Yahweh’s script.
Out here, in the silence between miracles, surrounded by millions of discontent people, it didn’t feel like God’s show though.
It felt like a setup to ensure Moses’ failure.
Moses wasn’t trying to steal glory or gain riches.
He had already left Pharaoh’s palace behind him.
He was trying to lead, faithfully.
In trying to carry everything, he began to carry what wasn’t his,
the role of the One who would come after him.
We too can end up in the same spot.
We want to help.
We want to lead.
We have families depending on us, work that makes demands of us, and dreams we race to catch before “time runs out.”
Somewhere in the middle of doing good things for good reasons,
we come to believe a subtle lie:
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