Vocation

In all honesty, when I sat down to write this blog post, I didn’t want to. I couldn’t think of anything to say and I had just spent an hour on youtube watching spoken word poetry by people who are much more eloquent than me and have much more meaningful things to say. Needless to say, my motivation and confidence were not at their greatest levels—especially as I come to the end of a semester. The promise of an entire month spent sleeping, reading, and eating with absolutely no deadlines or responsibilities looms so large it blocks out everything else and this, along with the Christmas music playing in my ears, makes it very easy to consider just checking out early.

In my attempts to find inspiration, I flipped through several of the books on my desk—some poetry, a memoir by a Lutheran pastor, an academic overview of Christian worship, a theological work—but they really just reminded me how many people have already said what I want to say and have said it much more persuasively and eloquently than me. So then I came to the bible and thought of Moses. You would think that if the other people on my bookshelf were intimidating, Moses would finish me off—standing up to Pharaoh, getting all of the Israelites to trust him, then getting all of the Israelites to follow him, parting the Red Sea (well technically God parted the Red Sea, but Moses was there, which is still impressive), being the first person to hear the 10 commandments, and somehow managing to deal with the complaints and ridiculousness of the Israelites during 40 years in the wilderness.

And yet, Moses wasn’t this perfect model of what all humans should strive to be and he had his doubts too. When God calls him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he doesn’t just shrug and say, “sure, why not?” In fact, it takes Moses almost an entire chapter in Exodus to agree to the call. First he says he’s not worthy to lead the Israelites, then that he doesn’t know what to call God when the Israelites ask about him, then says that the Israelites won’t believe or listen to him, and finally he says in Exodus 4:10, “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.”

I read this verse and sat back smugly in my chair—Yes! I thought. Moses couldn’t think of anything to say either. I am vindicated in my avoidance of this blog post! But of course, I kept reading and God quickly burst that bubble. God responds to Moses’ excuse by saying in verses 11 and 12, “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.” Right after this, Moses begs God to send someone else, which understandably pisses God off. I mean, at this point, all Moses had to do was show up and God would do the rest—even the words would be God’s—but Moses was still scared. So God tells him that his brother Aaron will do the speaking for him. As I read those words, I had a flutter of a wish for a proxy blog-post-writer, but I knew that wasn’t the point. I was not supposed to just continue thinking of excuses until someone else takes over. No, the point was that even when I think I have no words, God will always be there to teach me what to say.

So here I am, dutifully typing out some sort of blog post. I don’t know how meaningful it is and it definitely isn’t as beautiful and moving as any of the other words sitting on the desk next to me. But I’m here, trying my best and hoping that somewhere God’s words will slip into mine to make up for everything that I lack—I’m showing up and trusting that God will do the rest.