What is in your hand?
Wondering what you could be up to right now? Pay attention to this.
“What is in your hand?”
This is the question that God askes Moses when Moses is lamenting about all the reasons he can’t serve God (Exodus 4:2). It’s one of my favorite stories of whiney humans in the Bible. (The whiney complainers are my people.)
And profoundly, God asks this question: “What is that in your hand?”
The answer is a staff. The thing that Moses doesn’t even think twice about. A tool that is just part of his life and how he goes about his day.
The staff that, directed by God, would become a snake. As a powerful change-agent, his staff initiates the plagues that eventually get Pharoah’s attention. And it will be used to strike a rock to cause water to flow out in the desert. And to part the Red Sea.
I think about this question sometimes through the lens of purpose and what I am to do next in my life, or just my day. For Moses, it wasn’t the staff itself that was of use to God (it could have been a sock and God would’ve done what They wanted to do), but it was the slightly frightened, slightly whiney but eventually willing heart of Moses to be of use. To serve both God and his own people.
What is in your hand? What is in my hand?
A keyboard, a dog, a good cup of coffee. A family, an education, a car, a home. Skills, talents, interest—any and all of which become impact makers when willingly handed over to service. Outside of ourselves. Out of just our hands.
What if you and I started with what is in front of us right now? In our spaces, in our field of vision, within reach.
What could you do today with what you have right now to decrease the friction of what you want to create in the world and what you are actively doing to create that? What is the art, connection, peace, love, that thing that won’t leave your thoughts and heart alone that is in your hand?
What is in your hand?
Like, for reals. Right now.
Start with that.