Stick

On Sunday, Pastor Curt talked about how God performed a lot of miracles through Moses, and for a majority of them, He told Moses to use his staff...or as Pastor Curt called it, his stick.  God turned Moses' staff into a snake.  God initiated over half of the plagues on Egypt by telling Moses to stretch out his staff.  God parted the waters of the Red Sea by telling Moses, "Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground."  Later on as they were traveling through the desert, God tells Moses to strike a rock with his staff to provide water for the people. 

There was an ancillary point that wasn't the main theme of the sermon, but it's something that made me stop and think...

How easy would it have been to start looking to the stick as the source of power behind the miracles that were happening?  It's a key component of the majority of them.  Every time Moses used his staff, something out of the ordinary happened.  There had to be something special about that stick, don't you think?  There had to be a bit of an awe-factor seeing Moses walking around carrying the stick.  How easy would it have been to forget Who was actually the authority behind the supernatural phenomenon...especially when you're seeing something tangible producing amazing wonders right in front of you?

And then I started thinking about how easy that is in the here and now.  How easy is it to start looking to tangible things today that produce incredible outcomes?  How easy is it to lose sight of the Creator behind the talents and gifts that people possess?  How easy is it to focus on how eloquent a pastor is; how moved you are by a song; how talented an artist is; how well a teacher imparts knowledge; how gifted a writer is; how many people come forward when an evangelist gives an altar call; how a doctor heals a patient; how you were encouraged by that person who showed up at the exact time you needed them.  How easy is it to focus on the person that God uses or to focus on the object that God uses?  And how easy is it to forget Who is actually the source of power behind the miracles that are still happening around us everyday?

We have an amazing and powerful God who orchestrates all things together for our good!  May we never attribute the extraordinary of our amazing God to the ordinary of the tangible!  May we never focus on the stick and lose sight of the One who created it and chooses to use it as a vessel for His power!