“Tools for the trade”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Monday, April 4, 2022

Exodus 4:10-20, 27-31 (Forward, p. 65) CEV p. 58

So often we believers feel inadequate, ill-equipped, greatly lacking in the abilities or resources that we need. We feel prompted or called, or even coerced by someone else, to take on a task or a role, and feel compelled to exclaim, “Why me? Why I could never do that! I simply don’t have what it takes.”

If you feel like that, you are in good company. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah both had that same sense of reluctance (see Isaiah 6:5 and Jeremiah 1:6-8) and so too did Moses in today’s passage. Just listen to what he said to God by way of protest:

“I have never been a good speaker. I wasn’t one before you spoke to me, and I’m not one now. I am slow at speaking, and I can never think of what to say” (verse 10). But there is an old adage, “Where God guides, He also provides”, and that was certainly true here:

-God delegated Aaron, Moses’ brother, to serve as Moses’ mouthpiece. Moses would hear from God what was to be said and Moses would pass it on to his brother. God would be with both of them and would tell them what to do;

-God provided Moses’ with a miraculous walking stick by which he could perform miracles.

Indeed, between these two things, Moses and Aaron were able to persuade the Hebrew people into believing and into worshipping God because God had seen their plight, their suffering, and was going to help them. This was indeed a very good start as the peoples’ belief and confidence, in both the two brothers and in God, would most surely wane over the next weeks and months.

But most definitely, by the words and actions of the two brothers, and by the signs and wonders from God that accompanied them, the Hebrew slaves were delivered from their bondage in Egypt. However, it does need to be said, perhaps restated, that without those words and actions on the parts of Moses and Aaron, God’s purposes and His deliverance would have been severely thwarted, if not impeded entirely. Moses and Aaron had to go forth and speak to Pharaoh, and Moses repeatedly had to use his staff both to bring on the plagues and to part the waters of the Red (Reed) Sea. It is indeed what one Catholic theologian once said, in the old wording, “We need the conviction that God counts on men”. Surely that is both men and women, and is no less true today. God counts on all of us, you and I, and will provide whatever wisdom or tools or resources needed for the task. Amen.

Forward notes: “But Moses said to the LORD, ‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’ Then the LORD said to him, ‘Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak’ (verses 10-12).

“I am not Moses. I am almost never at a loss for words nor do I lack of confidence in my ability to speak. f I were in Moses’s position, I would have jumped at the opportunity God was offering.

“I can be overconfident in my words and their ability to influence people and events. It is perhaps one of the few ways in which I can be truly vain. But in my everyday life, when I do not have time or energy to polish each phrase, I realize how often my words lack power or grace or love.

“At my best, I can be a conduit, a mouthpiece of God. But I have to trust more in God’s power and less in my perceived ability to influence others.”

MOVING FORWARD: “When have you felt equipped to do God’s work? When have you felt lacking?”