Didn’t sleep much this week. That’s not normal for me. Usually I am asleep within minutes each night. I might wake up once or twice, hear an unfamiliar noise, categorize it or investigate it, go back to sleep. But night after night this week, I saw each hour several times on my watch or phone. This morning, up at three, stewing and stirring. The struggle and strain of the past week- to what purpose?
Internalizing work stress is not unfamiliar for many of us,whether in leadership or not. However, I think the strain of struggling staff, reckoning with spreading responsibilities, accepting ambiguous accountability or purpose, these things started taking their toll.
I felt myself wanting to push God- “I’m needing to do that?……Seriously?”
Moses had spent the last forty years taking an advances course of study in humility, trust, faith, listening. And yet when God came to him with is graduation assignment, carrying His message of liberation to a downtrodden and enslaved people, his response was, “You want me to do that?….seriously?”
Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A staff,” he replied.
The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.”
Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.” Exodus 4 NIV.
“What is in your hand?” God says to me. “I’ve given you talents and passions. I’ve given you My power to use them for good, for the benefit of My people all around you who are depending on you to do just that.”
What is in your hand? Do you have the ability to make sense of endless columns of data? Do you have the gift of putting hurting patients at ease while you serve them? Have you been given the joy of inspiring and uplifting those serving next to you?
God has a specific purpose for you. He has prepared you in a very unique way to face today. There are those around you who are, knowingly or unknowingly, waiting for you. “Waiting for me to do what?” you might ask.
Waiting for you to willingly throw what’s in your hand into the life in front of you! Take the raw materials of your talents and passions and willingly pitch them forward, trusting God to transform them, using them for a purpose that only He can see.
What is in your hand?