June 10, 2022
The Almost Daily will be on Summer Vacation until August 8th. But fear not! You will receive a devotional each Monday through Friday from the excellent Mockingbird Devotional entitled Daily Grace. Enjoy! - Paul Walker
But Moses said to the LORD, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent...” Then the LORD said to him, “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.” But he said, “O my Lord, please send someone else.” (Exodus 4:10-13)
I’ve never been big on conventional heroes—the Captain Americas or Neil Armstrongs of the world. To me, the most compelling figures in literature and life are those that are flawed or vulnerable in some meaningful way, and I’m pretty sure God shares this proclivity, at least if the Bible is anything to go by.
Moses is one of God’s great anti-heroes. Despite lowly origins, he grew up in the royal court of Egypt to become what one can only infer was a cocky, hot-blooded young man—the sort who neither doubts his own righteousness nor his ability to fix things. But then he murders an Egyptian and is forced to flee for his life. Through the next forty years in rural anonymity, he passes from excessive confidence to profound self-doubt. By the time God visits him in a burning bush, Moses is hardly inclined to see himself as the heroic type.
And yet God nevertheless charges him with the epic task of confronting Pharaoh and bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses naturally wonders, “Who am I?” and peppers God with a litany of quite sensible misgivings. Despite God’s reassurances, Moses still isn’t having it. Then, as if the burning bush thing wasn’t enough, God proceeds to turn Moses’ staff into a snake, then back into a staff, and then covers Moses’ hand with leprosy before healing it again. After all this, as we see in the passage above, Moses still pleads inadequacy and begs God to “send someone else.”
Who can’t relate? Who doesn’t after all feel inadequate and fearful when confronted by the vast problems of this world or by our own weaknesses and failings, not to mention by the awesome mystery of God? But in this Exodus story, God reminds Moses that we are never the real heroes anyway. And just as God took a murderous “basket case” like Moses and made him the deliverer of his people and conduit for the Torah, God takes even us and breathes life and purpose and the strength of love into our dreary lives. We’re still anti-heroes, to be sure, but we’re God’s anti-heroes, and God’s not done with us.
[Benjamin Self, Daily Grace - Mockingbird Devotional Vol. 2]
