I have a love-hate relationship with our property.
When we first bought it we did so knowing that we would need to pour blood, sweat and tears into the property, for it was a visual disaster.
Almost fourteen years later, we are still bleeding, sweating and the tears are ever-flowing.
Much our time here, I have hated what it has taken from us, in terms of money, time and energy. Now, as we are preparing the property to sell, I find myself looking around at all that we have done, at how it is now looking as we had dreamed, and bemoaning the fact that we are about to leave it, for someone else to enjoy.
I have found my longing thoughts to be interrupted by a whisper in my mind,
don’t hold too tightly to the things of Earth
It was then that I remembered a speaker once talking about the staff that Moses carried.
Moses was a shepherd, and his staff was the tool of his trade. It was what helped him in protection of his sheep, but the staff would only do it’s job when under his control.
When Moses met God in the burning bush, “the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A staff,” he replied.” (Exodus 4:2)
I am pretty certain that God knew what was in Moses hand, but, I think, he wanted Moses to acknowledge it as it was, a staff, a tool when in his expert hand.
God gets Moses to throw down his staff, and God shows him what his staff can do when it is God who is in it’s control.
Later in the passage, we learn that the staff of Moses is to become the staff of God: “take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.” (Exodus 4:17).
And he does. That staff, once the tool of Moses, is transformed into a snake, plagues, splits the Red Sea, and helps the Israelites defeat their enemy, when under the control of God.
The thing is, for God to operate that staff, Moses had to throw it down and allow God to take control …
he had to loosen his grip.
Whatever we are holding onto, if it can be used by God, he will leave it in our hands, if not, he will still use us in ways we cannot even imagine.
What is in our hands that God is asking us to throw down? loosen our grip? let go? If we can trust him with our souls, surely we can trust him with the things he has provided.
itsawonderfilledlife 