Then Moses replied (to God), “But what if they don’t believe me or pay attention to me? They might say to me, ‘The Lord didn’t appear to you!’”
The Lord said to him, “What’s that in your hand?”
Moses replied, “A shepherd’s rod.” – Exodus 4:1-2

Here I go again, all optimistic and excited, full with belief about what God is doing!

I really shouldn’t be, seeing as I had such a bad night’s sleep (welcome to allergy season in North Carolina!), took too much Benadryl around 2:00 AM, and woke up this morning with a pounding headache and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

But now it’s 9:00 and I have already spent some quality time with God, attended a small group meeting with some of the men, and enjoyed a second cup of coffee with Rebekah. To top it all off, right now I’m meditating on a fascinatingly inspirational scripture that is speaking volumes.

The Bible passage came up toward the end of our meeting. “Please share a scripture that has helped you this week,” I asked. “How has God been speaking into your experience through the word?”

That’s when Robert – one of our newest members – talked about Exodus 4:2. He pointed out that God imply asked Moses, “What’s that in your hand?” or, “What do you have in your hand?”

Another way to ask this question is, “What do we have at hand?”

This is how God is challenging us, Robert pointed out. God is asking “what do we have in our hands?” God is always prepared to use us in any circumstance and to use whatever resource we have at hand.

Here we are, right here. We are not somewhere else, we are not in some other circumstance, we are right here in the middle of our community and we are followers of Jesus, and we have a particular set of resources at hand, and God is asking us, “Well? What are you going to do?”

It is a question for my church. It is a question for your church. It is a question for us as individuals.

What do we have “in our hand?” And what is God calling us to do? – DEREK