Tag: Moses

Stuck in Smithport

On By Michele Huey, Author & SpeakerIn Christian livingLeave a comment

What is that in your hand? – Exodus 4:2 (NIV)

After a year and a half of filling the pulpit for a small, local congregation, I felt adrift and useless—that I’d lost my sense of purpose. It didn’t hit me all at once. My last Sunday with what I’d come to call “my little flock” was October 28. The next two months were filled with holiday happenings and a challenging writing course. 

Then the holidays were over and the schedule settled down. Snow swirled outside and the sun, along with my writing muse, disappeared for days on end. The weather was too inclement to walk outside and too unpredictable to plan shopping trips to town. Even my bi-weekly Bible study was postponed until spring. I felt stuck in Smithport. The only phone calls were my daughter’s weekly updates on Sunday evenings and requests: requests from the church’s prayer chain, requests to babysit the grandkids, and requests for milk, eggs, sugar, tomato paste, or whatever my sweet son and daughter-in-law didn’t have for the recipe they were making. By the time my husband, who worked 11-hours days, and I had supper, spent a little time together over tea and cleaned up the kitchen, not much was left of the evening or my energy. After my shower I watched NCIS reruns.

Reruns. That’s what my life felt like. Until God gave me a Gibbs-like smack on the head. 

I was reading Exodus 3 about when God called Moses from leading sheep to leading His people. Moses had spent 40 years in Midian on a quiet mountainside after 40 years as a prince of Egypt. Talk about feeling put on a shelf! 

“What is that in your hand?” God asked him. 

“A staff,” Moses replied.

“Throw it on the ground,” God told him.

And so he did, and it turned into a snake. When God told Moses to pick it up again, and he obeyed, it turned back into a shepherd’s staff. We all know the story: how Moses led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt to the borders of the Promised Land. 

But Moses had to first acknowledge what he already had and then let God use it for His purpose.

“What is that in your hand?” God asks me.

And I think about all that my hands touch each day: food, dishes, laundry, a keyboard, writing lesson books, a vacuum cleaner, the phone, my grandchildren’s coats and shoes when they come for a visit, Scrabble tiles and jigsaw puzzle pieces, a pencil for a game of Boggle or Yahtzee!

And I realize I can’t see the trees for the forest. I’m too busy searching “out there” in the big, wide world for my purpose, but it’s right in front of me: taking care of my husband, being available for my children and grandchildren, praying for others’ needs, proofreading my daughter’s papers as she works towards her master’s degree, mentoring student writers through Christian Writers Guild, reaching out to those who read my weekly column and blogs, working to improve the talent God gave me. 

What’s in my hand? 

God’s purpose for me. Not “out there,” “someday,” but here and now. 

Forgive me, Lord, for treating as unimportant what You have put in my hand. Amen.

Read and reflect on Exodus 3–4.

From God, Me, & a Cup of Tea: 101 devotional readings to savor during your time with God © 2017 Michele Huey. All rights reserved.

In Midian

On By Michele Huey, Author & SpeakerIn Christian livingLeave a comment
Image courtesy of Deposit Photos, photo by gorlovkv

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established. —Proverbs 19:21 RSV

Moses. Now there was a man who had it all—prosperity, power, prestige. But this prince of Egypt, thanks to his impulsive nature and nasty temper, became a refugee, fleeing for his life in disgrace and fear. Instead of a palace, the wilderness. No longer the proud prince but a lowly shepherd. Talk about culture shock!

As he tended sheep in the godforsaken desert and on the lonely mountainsides of Midian, did he think he was all washed up? A has-been? That the best part of his life was over? How long did it take him to stop missing the splendor, the hype? Did he feel as though he lost his purpose?

Then after forty years, Mission Impossible: “And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:9–10 NIV).

Oh, right. Like that was going to happen. Moses knew Pharaoh. But Pharaoh didn’t know God. So Moses hedged. He made more excuses than a kid who doesn’t want to do his homework.

But man cannot argue with God. Well, you can, but you can’t win. For every excuse once-mighty Moses gave, God had an answer.

Moses spent the next forty years leading a stubborn, rebellious, cantankerous nation over one million strong through both a physical wilderness and a spiritual one. It was for this that Moses was enshrined in the famous “Hall of Faith” (Hebrews 11).  He died a great leader with a fame that endures to this day, a fame he never could have achieved as a prince of Egypt.

But I wonder, as he dealt with the constant complaining, the mercurial temperament of a nation whose loyalty and emotions were as fickle as an ambivalent teenager’s, as he quelled rebellion after rebellion, as he wore himself out settling their petty disputes—did he long for the quiet hillsides of Midian, tending to a flock that was undemanding, whose major flaw was stupidity?

Sometimes we find ourselves in Midian, wondering if we’re all washed up, if somehow we missed God’s purpose for us. Or we wonder if we’re being punished. Or perfected. I’ll never be perfect, so I wonder if I’ll spend the rest of my life stuck in Midian, in a wilderness where the only attention I get is from needy sheep.

I’ve already discovered I can’t handle the pressures Moses had when he traded sheep for people. But then, everything that happened in Moses’ life had a purpose: to prepare him for the job God had planned for him all along. Moses wasn’t perfect when God called him—or afterwards either. Moses blundered and thundered and made both the Almighty and the Israelites angry.

Through the trials, he learned in lean times to lean on God. The leaner the time, the harder he leaned. And he learned where God sends, He also enables and provides. 

God hasn’t changed.

If you find yourself in Midian, enjoy the peace and quiet, the absence of strife and chaos. Work with God as He molds you for the job ahead. Then you might wish you were back in Midian.

But, then, it could be your job is Midian.

In that case, take to heart the words of another man who, centuries after Moses, found himself in his own Midian, the apostle Paul in a jail cell: “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content” (Philippians 4:11 RSV).

Dear God, if I spend the rest of my life in Midian, help me to be content. Help me to know that You will fulfill Your purpose for me (Psalm 138:8). Amen.

Read and reflect on Exodus 2:1–3:10.

From God, Me, & a Cup of Tea: 101 devotional readings to savor during your time with God © 2017 Michele Huey. All rights reserved.