Questions God Asked Men: What Is In Your Hand?

A lot had changed. His status changed. His home changed. His day-to-day changed. Once in the pomp of Egyptian royalty, now tending to the flocks of his father-in-law. Moses, after the altercation in which he struck an Egyptian, was refused by the Hebrews and hunted by Pharaoh (formerly a grandfather to him), had a lot change for him. Such a radical shift in life might lead someone to think they have lost power, influence, and the potential to serve.

We know Moses would go on to offer excuses for feeling inadequate for the role God called him to. How could he, stripped of former power and authority and now shepherding flocks, be the man God would use to bring His people out of bondage? How could anyone with so few social advantages do anything of the sort? The answer: by God.

When God appears to Moses in the burning bush, the story continues with God selecting Moses as the redeemer of His people. In Exodus 4, God asks an interesting question: “What is in your hand?” (Ex 4:2). Moses responds, “A staff.” It is just an ordinary item, made of wood, good for his stability, great for putting a knot on a stubborn animal’s head. It was just ordinary, that is, until God used it for a demonstration. God would turn it into a serpent - the ultimate point being that God can make something ordinary extraordinary. Would we say that Moses expected this when the question was asked? That a piece of wood would become a hissing, living, swirling serpent? Surely not.

What is the point we are getting at? If you consider where Moses was in life, you would assume that his legacy would be confined to the ordinary life of a shepherd. But when you read about the life of Moses, you find that to be quite the opposite. God took someone ordinary, someone who even fell from great heights of worldly-glory into “regularness”, and made him extraordinary. He made Moses rethink what was in his hand. Ought we do the same?

Ought we stop and consider how the things which we have are not merely tools for work or comfort, but that with them we possess the ability to glorify God? What do you have that you can glorify God with? What part of your ordinary life is really an opportunity to do something extraordinary? We all have opportunities, some more than others, are we using them for God?