Parshas Shemos - The End of the Road and the Beginning

Midian is the end of Moshe's journey in both his escape from Egypt and his leadership of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. 

After  fleeing Pharaoh's wrath, Moshe makes his way to Midian where he marries and herds his father-in-law's sheep in the desert by Har Sinai. There he receives the revelation of the burning bush. And there he meets his brother Aharon before the two of them set off together. 

Moshe's original journey foreshadows his future journey. At the end of his mission, G-d commands him to lead the war against Midian before he is to die. On neither journey does Moshe enter the land of his fathers. 

It would be easy to see this as a failure if we view Moshe's life on a map running forward. And yet by retracing and beginning his religious mission from Sinai, we can understand Moshe's life not in linear fashion, but as a mission centered on the place where the Torah was given to the Jewish people.

All lives run forward ultimately end in death. And from that vantage people, they can seem futile.

But viewed from the centrality of the Torah, Moshe and those who learn and teach it are immortal.