By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger, for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible. 

— Hebrews 11:24-27

Two weeks after my first year of college, I found myself in a state of vulnerability. I had just returned home, still excited about wrapping up my first year away from home after making new friends, navigating academic challenges and embracing young adulthood. Then came the phone call that shattered the magic of that completed year: Beth, a friend from college, had died in a tragic accident. 

After the call, I started walking over to the home of my college roommate, who also lived in my neighborhood just a 10-minute walk away and was also close friends with Beth. We needed to mourn together. 

But midway on my walk there, the fragility of my emotions met the ugliness of our society. A White kid on a bicycle rode past me. As he sped by, he turned, gave me the finger, and yelled the n-word.

My family had moved to this majority-White Philly suburb just before my 10th grade. Until this moment, I hadn’t faced much overt anti-Black prejudice. So this was unexpected. 

This verbal blow was a real gut punch. Of course, he didn’t know I was grieving; he simply saw a Black body and decided it was a worthy target for dehumanization. In an instant, my watery eyes began to burn with a mixture of grief and anger. He metaphorically kicked me while I was down, attempting to strip away my dignity when I was already feeling broken.

Reflecting on that day, I realized that while I wasn’t sheltered from the harsh realities of poverty or violence in the struggling borough where I initially grew up, I had been sheltered from the constant gaze of White supremacy. My Black family, my Black friends and my Black church formed a hush harbor for my body and soul. In those spaces, I wasn’t a target. I was seen, protected and valued.

I was sheltered from the White gaze so that I could be exposed to the eyes of a community that saw me as fearfully and wonderfully made. Youth leaders instilled self-affirmation. Elders affirmed my gifts. The older women of the church told me I was handsome. The entire community celebrated my milestones. They protected me from a world that sought to diminish me. 

This communal “hiding” rhymes with the radical faith found in Hebrews 11:23: “By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” 

Moses’ parents didn’t hide him randomly. They hid him because of how they saw him. Some translations say they saw that he was precious. They saw beauty, preciousness and the imago Dei (image of God). Because they recognized his inherent worth, they were no longer afraid of the Empire’s death-dealing decrees. Their treatment of Moses was inseparable from their vision of him.

Today we are bombarded by the empire’s edicts. We have laws, policies and rhetoric designed to dehumanize our neighbors and desensitize us to systems of oppression. The sheer volume of these assaults is intended to overwhelm us, dulling our eyes until we can no longer see the beauty and value in our neighbor. 

But the gospel demands that we see them anew anyhow. When we genuinely see each other as beautiful and precious, we find the courage to defy the dehumanizing edicts of our time. 

To see someone as reverently and wonderfully made by God is to accept the risky consequences of love. It draws us into mutual liberation where we protect our neighbors’ worth as fiercely as Moses’ parents protected his. 

If you have been a recipient of that kind of protective love (the kind that affirmed your humanity when the world denied it), then you have been prepared to let your life rhyme with the life of Moses. 

Moses went from being one who was seen, valued and protected to one who chose to see, value and protect his community through liberating solidarity. He moved from the safety of the hush harbor to enacting faithful resistance because he saw those who were suffering and by faith saw and trusted the One who is invisible.