Moses turned and came down the mountain
with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands,
tablets that were written on both sides, front and back;
tablets that were made by God,
having inscriptions on them that were engraved by God himself.
—Exodus 32:15–16

While watching The Prince of Egypt on Netflix recently, I realized that both Moses and God are voiced by the same actor, Val Kilmer. At first this struck me as odd, but then I thought more about it and realized it kind of makes sense for God and Moses to share the same voice. After all, God used Moses as His representative to the people of Israel—He spoke with Moses’s voice.

The scene of Moses speaking to God in the burning bush—aka Val Kilmer speaking to Val Kilmer—takes on a deeper meaning when we consider how we hear God in our own lives. God is infinitely greater than what we can comprehend, and so what we experience of Him is filtered through our own understanding. He comes to us within the realm of our own thoughts, our own perceptions. He lowers Himself down and speaks to us in our own language. Whatever we understand of God in this life is but a pale shadow of Who He truly is, rendered through our human perspective. He communicates His love for us in words we can understand, but an even greater love, beyond human description, awaits us in Heaven.

Just as God used imperfect Moses as His instrument, speaking to the people of Israel, He desires to use us as His instruments, too. When we surrender to Jesus in the Eucharist, He uses our very voices to speak His truth, to convey his great love for all His people. And He uses the voices of the people we encounter, too, to speak to our hearts.

Who is a Moses in our own lives, sharing words of guidance when we are lost, lifting our eyes to the heights of the mountaintop? Are we willing to put aside our own wills and opinions in order to be a Moses for others, allowing God to speak through us?

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1. James Tissot, Moses and the Ten Commandments / PD-US
2. The Burning Bush