Laying It on the Line

Here I sit in the middle of the night at the computer workstation typing. My mind will not shut down. Maybe it was work today, or maybe it is the future. Changes are coming, big changes.

This is a presidential election year. I am wondering if we will have a good choice for which to cast our votes. Right now, I do not see one. That covers both the Democratic presumptive nominee and the Republican.

In ancient Egypt, they did not have to worry about voting. They got stuck with the fellow who had the greatest claim on the throne or the person who was the most willing to lay it all on the line by using every trick he knew to beat out his family members and other competitors for that position. It is often said that old age and treachery will beat youth and enthusiasm every time.

During one of those reigns, circumstances changed for a specific group of folks, who had been slaving away and living in what was called the land of Goshen. Yahweh heard their cries and sent them a deliverer. (Have you ever wondered what would happen in today's world if all the believers in the U.S. cried out for a godly leader? But that is a subject for a different blog. Sigh!)

Moses arrives on the scene by way of the scenic route. Nothing like a few years at his mother's knee learning about his ethnic heritage, in the lap of ancient luxury at the palace of the pharaoh, or even herding sheep in the land of Midian to help shape the character of a leader.

While herding those sheep (which are as cantankerous as any group of people that I know) a curious sight caused a detour in his path back to the palace. Nothing like a burning bush to catch your attention is there. At that bush, he had an encounter of the supernatural kind. I have often wondered if the the flame took the shape of a face, or if God just spoke to him from the bush, but that questions will have to wait for heaven.

God called a leader that day. A person specifically chosen by God and shaped by his experiences. However, before he could fulfill that calling, he had to confront his own demons and take a hard look at every aspect of his life. By the end of the encounter, Moses had laid it all on the line to become the leader of God's Chosen People.

The staff Moses carried was representative of everything in his life, all he had become and had to give. In his own hand, it was just a staff for him to lean on, bring wayward sheep back into line, and to fight off the predators using his own strength and knowledge. Moses had to make a choice to lay all he was, all he did, all he cared for down before his God, because it was only by the grace of God, the help of the Holy Ghost, and the love of God that he could become and continue to be all he was called to be. He left that bush and that encounter, changed in ways we will never understand completely until we can stand before the Father and ask about them.

We, too, must lay all of ourselves down and yield to our Father. We must know and accept that we can do nothing in our own strength, but that we can do all thing through Christ Jesus who is our strength. Yielding to His grace and love bring clarity of vision and allows us to fulfill the purpose to which we are called (and we are all called to a purpose that will touch eternity - again a subject for another time).