Daily Lesson for March 17, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 4 verses 10 through 13:

10 But Moses said to the Lord, ‘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.’ 11Then 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? 12Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.’ 13But he said, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else.’

And Moses said, “Here I am LORD; send Aaron.”

The LORD would indeed send Aaron to speak to Pharaoh, but not with Moses. Moses was going because Moses was called to go. He was flat out told he had to go. 

He was scared. “My lips and tongue don’t work right,” he said. He was probably remembering all those times growing up in Pharaoh’s house where he wanted to say something and instead quivered. Instead he resulted to violence. As Dr. King said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”

But forty years later, Moses has done his penance. He he’s done his hard time.  He’s penitent now; and he’s seasoned now also. He’s ready now — more ready than he knows. He would not go back to Pharaoh if he didn’t have to; but something inside compels him. Some burning bush inside him tells him he must. He’s eighty years old; and now he’s going to go and speak to Pharaoh.

Which makes me think of a group of women at our church. They call themselves Grandmothers Against Violence. Grandmothers who are sick and tired of hearing about gun violence and mass shooting have decided they are going to go down with the youth to the March For Our Lives this weekend and lend their voices to the call for change to our nation’s gun laws. Some of them are nearing seventh and eighty years old. And they are going to speak to Pharaoh.  I don’t know if they’ve ever done anything like this or not; they seem pretty mild-mannered. But they are going to have a word with Pharaoh.

Sometimes the LORD just puts something inside of us that cannot be resisted. Pharaoh may scare us to death. We may have spent forty years running and hiding from him. But suddenly there’s a burning bush. Suddenly, now we have something to say and we know we’re the ones to say it. 

And so we say, “Here I am — a person of unclean lips, a person of quivering lips.  But here I am LORD anyways, send me.”