Richard Doster
We’re almost always surrounded by insurmountable problems. There’s the mess in Ukraine, a sudden rash of plane crashes and natural disasters, from fire to flooding. Locally, there’s overdevelopment, the Fernandina Beach waterfront, too much traffic and too many tourists. Then there’s the maintenance of downtown and of our beaches.
Who could blame us for brushing our hands of the whole mess and turning to simpler things. The hard-to-take truth is that none of us has the power to fix what’s wrong.
Unless …. It could be that we’re looking at these things from the wrong perspective. Maybe, given the counterintuitive ways God works in the world, it’s when we reach our limits that we discover the source of all the power we need.
Look at Exodus 3; there God’s speaking to Moses “from within” a burning bush. God tells him that he’s heard the cry of his people, that he’s seen how the Egyptians have mistreated them, and that he’s come to rescue them. Then he reveals how. He tells Moses, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” God is telling this man, who’s been tending sheep for the past 40 years, to challenge the mightiest military power in the world.
This idea sounds absurd, which prompts Moses to ask the obvious question: “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt. … . They will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’” (Exodus 3:11; 4:1).
God ignores Moses’ objections and, instead, and for no apparent reason, asks Moses, “What is that in your hand?” Moses tells him it’s a staff. Every shepherd had one, and it’s likely that Moses had carried this one for all those 40 years. He knew it was just an ordinary stick of wood.
Then God told him to throw it on the ground, and Moses watched the stick turn to a serpent. God then ordered him to pick it up by the tail, and the staff miraculously returned to its original form. Then, with the demonstration over, God repeated the order to go meet Pharaoh face to face, and to take the rod with him. Because from that moment, Moses’ staff would convey God’s power.
Francis Schaeffer, the 20th century theologian, described how, at every crucial point in the Exodus story, this ordinary piece of wood shows up. In Exodus 7:15-17, God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh, “And you shall say to him, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.” But so far, you have not obeyed. Thus, says the Lord, “By this you shall know that I am the Lord: behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood.” The water was changed, just as Moses said, because he struck it with a piece of wood.
In chapters 8-10, Moses “stretches forth his rod” and a multitude of plagues afflicts Egypt: frogs, lice, thunder and hail, and then locusts. Pharaoh finally relents; he lets the people go but, before they get far, he changes his mind. When his army catches up to the Hebrews they’re trapped: mountains on one side, the sea on the other. Yet again, God tells Moses, “Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground” (Exodus 14:16).
When they reached Rephidim, the people were thirsty. One more time, God said to Moses, “Take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink” (Exodus 17:5-6).
The staff wasn’t magic. And nobody believed that a stick could draw water from stone. And there’s the lesson for us. We’re limited, Schaeffer said, but “We’re not less than a stick of wood.” Just “as the rod of Moses had to become the rod of God, so that which is me must become the me of God.”
There are two kinds of people, Schaeffer explained, those who are consecrated to God and those who aren’t. Who knows what God might ask of those who are? And what problems he might solve through them.
Richard Doster lives in Fernandina Beach with his wife Sally. He’s the founding editor of byFaith, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America. Reach him at doster.richard@gmail.com.