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Did It Have to Be Moshe?
G-d tells Moshe to go and save the Jews. Moshe’s reply is a question: “Who am I?”
G-d seems to ignore the question, almost as if it was the wrong question! Instead of answering the question directly, G-d replies:
“I will be with you.”
This non-answer suggests that perhaps Moshe was indeed not qualified for such a monumental task?!
Perhaps G-d’s reply is a way of telling Moshe (and each of us) that by ourselves, none of us is particularly special? That indeed, it may make little or no difference who we are? That what really matters is that that we can do anything as long as G-d is with us?!
Does that thought give us courage for other endeavors in our lives?
Published in General
I suspect many Christian pastors have preached some version of the sermon you just typed, but with less clarity and a lot more words.
Well done.
And 90s Christian music, too!
Or just endlessly wondering if He is really with us in whatever we happen to be doing at the moment? The way I usually find myself framing the issue.
And the other issue is to recognize that changing a diaper is service to Him, just not on the same order as dividing a sea. And that doing a big thing badly may not have the merit of doing a small thing well in His eyes.
Who we think we are is less important than our relationship with G-d.
His ways are not our ways. The big trap is when we think we are pleasing Him and we are earning His wrath. Corrupt religious leaders stoke that. If I had not read scripture from a very young age, I would just be another clueless sinner talking about God is love and embracing the sin of presumption all the way to perdition. Scripture subverts fallen human culture.
The combination of that thought and the post’s thought is a constant through Scripture.
Even to the Jewish people as a whole. G-d keeps reminding them that He chose them to represent Him not because they were the most numerous or the strongest or any other human characteristic.
He points out to King Saul (in the book of Samuel) that Saul was nothing until G-d chose him, but because Saul did not continue to trust in G-d Saul’s lineage as king was not going to continue.
Going backwards, on the surface it was impossible for Abram and Sarai to have a child. Rather than relying on G-d, They took it into their own hands, with unpleasant results. Yet with G-d a child came from Abram and Sarai.
Ruth (not even a Hebrew, but adopts the G-d of the Hebrews and does the work in front of her and becomes the grandmother of King David, and for the Christians is listed in the lineage of Jesus).
Isaiah (a man of unclean lips chosen to prophesy the Word of G-d).
Ezekiel (stuck in exile becomes the messenger of a vision of G-d).
Ezra and Nehemiah (a couple of other guys stuck out in exile who rebuild Jerusalem and holy worship).
Example after example appears of G-d doing the extraordinary with the ordinary, and of “ordinary” people just doing the work G-d puts in front of them even when the people don’t see all the way to the end result.
Basically I’ve heard it said this way: “It’s not true that God won’t give you anything you can’t handle. What’s true is that He will never give you anything He can’t handle.”
This reminds me of how the Kotzker rebbe responded to a disciple who asked, “Where is God?”
“Wherever you let him in,” the rebbe replied.
What distinguished Joseph and won him over to Pharaoh was his insistence that his ability to solve dreams came from God. Joseph never took credit for anything he did, attributing his achievements to God alone. It was this self-effacement that made him fit to rule Egypt, just as Moses, the greatest leader of all time, was described as “exceedingly humble, more than any person on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3).