Last night was publishing class night.  The lady who spoke, Nancy Berland, was very good.  However, after thirty minutes, I had heard so many new terms that I had never heard before--concerning the ins and outs of getting your book to market--that I felt like a two year old listening to Einstein.

Everyone else in the class has been writing for the purpose of being published--and understands the "lingo".  I wrote my book just to "get it down" and hadn't thought much about the next step.  And that was thirty years ago.  I am illiterate on the subject of getting a book to market.

In the last thirty years, a million, zillion things about books have changed.  It is overwhelming, to say the least.  People don't hold a book in their hands like they used to.  And there are so many computer related pieces of information, that it makes me want to throw my hands in the air and give up.  I guess if you were writing for a living, you would have a financial motivation to learn all of the things you need to know about marketing.  But the minute someone says "computer," I get brain freeze.

I just want to throw all the pages in the air and see where they land.

Think about all of the new words that have entered the English language in the last fifty years.  Computer related terms.  The list is endless.  I don't know what most of them mean.  I now know what it feels like (to a five year old) to be presented with a list of letters and be told that they are going to make words with those letters so that they can read.  Read.  The cornerstone of learning.

I need a ten year old to help me.  I need a permanent helper by my side.  Permanent, because when I do learn something new, unless I use it over and over again, I forget it.

I am still learning how to use my I-Phone.  The power these gadgets give you is unbelievable.

I'm making headway.  I won't give up.  It's not my nature.  But, sincerely--God help me.

I've been on a reading binge.  One book a day.  The library sends me six books every week.  What am I reading?  I can't remember because I never look at the title or the author.  Unless it is John Grishom.  I like the way he constructs a story.  I have learned to write by reading.  I look at phrasing, sentence structure and what words introduce a new paragraph.

If an author bumbles around, or gives too many descriptions of flowers, the sky, houses on the street, or what someone is wearing, they have lost me.  I don't like fol-de-rol.  I find myself skipping entire paragraphs of fop-de-rol,  looking for the next sentence in which something happens.  I'm not much on scenery.

I found that when I write, I have been starting too many sentences with: "And", or "So", or "But"--as a follow-on to the preceding paragraph.  Bad structure.  But Carolyn said it was okay to do that from time to time.  I've just been overdoing it.

I love to read.  I know a good book when I read it.  I just haven't exactly figured out what makes it good.  It isn't that it is romance, or mystery, or biography, or historical fiction, it is the way the writer presents the material.  The more I read, the better I write.

Which makes me amused at the apostle Paul and the way he wrote.  He was a rabbit chaser.  His head was full to exploding with knowledge, and when he would start a sentence, some word in it would remind him of something else, and off he would go.  One passage in Colossians that I have referred to many times: "...If you continue in the faith...and aren't moved away from the hope..." and then Paul goes of on a tangent for five verses before he finishes the sentence.

"Which is Christ in you, the hope of Glory."  In between all of that, he talks about a dozen other things before he finishes the sentence.  "...If you continue in the faith...and aren't moved away from the hope...which is Christ in you the hope of Glory.  You have to be careful when you read something that Paul wrote or you will come to the wrong conclusion.

When we lived in Beaufort in 1963-66, we lived next door to a Jewish doctor (I'll call him David--not his real name) aspiring to be a neurosurgeon.  He had an opportunity to interview for a neurosurgical residency in Philadelphia, so Ken offered to fly him there.   David had never been in an airplane--much less a supersonic military jet equipped with an ejection seat.

But he was willing to do the chamber (test for anoxia--where you pass out from lack of oxygen) and the ejection seat trial, because he was broke and couldn't even afford the gas to drive.  Contrary to popular opinion, everyone in the military is broke from moving.  Yes the government pays for the moving van, but back then, that was it.  I'd explain all the other costs but I would run out of space.

Long story short, David didn't tell Ken that he had never been in an airplane until they got back from Philly.  They got caught in an ice storm and had to lay over with Dave's Kosher parents for a couple of days and when they returned, they were running low on gas, so Ken did what he had done a zillion times in Korea, he turned off the engine at altitude and glided until they were close to the landing strip before he fired the engine back up to land.

"We never had enough gas to do our runs in Korea.  You would get as high as you could coming in from a run, turn off the engine and glide.  Sometimes we ran out of gas--and had to do a dead stick landing.  The key was getting as close as you could to the air strip and try to reserve enough fuel so that you could turn the engine back on and land.  Sometimes it worked."

"I remember once when I was coming back in, I explained the situation to the tower and he told me I was seventh in the "Low on fuel" landing pattern.  That's when you get a little nervous," Ken said.

Dave swore he would never get in an airplane again--even though he agreed that it was a once in a lifetime experience.  "No problem," Ken told him.  "Everything was under control."

Dave got the job.

I had to miss church Sunday and get a substitute for my class that I teach.  I've got whatever is going  around.  Sore throat, chest congestion, headache...bummer.

The lady who keeps records in the class called and said that one of my members died this week.  That was a shock.  She had gone to visit her daughter in Texas for a month and had a heart attack.

Death comes to us all.  The Bible says it comes like a thief in the night.  Unexpected, to rob us and take our most valuable possession--life.

Sometimes it is expected.  But either way, expected or unexpected, it still it robs us of the people we love.  My grandson called last night and talked for an hour or so--which was wonderful.  He is good to call me.  I wish I could call my grandmother.  Or my mother, or my dad, or Ken...and the list goes on and on of people who knew me, loved me and remember all of the same things that I remember.  When you live a long life--as I have--you lose people that you love.

Death has robbed me of countless people that make up the tapestry of my life.  I can count on one hand the people who are left from my generation.  Friends and family.  People that can give me advice and direction.  Who were my elders and contemporaries.  Fourteen aunts and uncles.

I am the last leaf on the tree.  In the November of my life.  And that is a fact.  I praise God that I have had the joy of serving Him with my life--due to the input of all of those people.  Without the influence of the people God that put in my life, I can't help but wonder how destitute my spiritual life would be.  What a blessing I have had.

Well, I just reread what I have written--to edit it--and it sounds terribly sad.  I'm not sad.  I'm not depressed.  I am thankful.  God has blessed me.  And even though I have lost so many people, I have all of the generations that have come after me.

"My quiver is full of arrows" is how the Bible puts it.

Becky Bacon came to stay for a couple of days.  We went out to Pat's house,  and Becky fell in love with Pat's log cabin.  It is nice.  Since we finished Pat's master bathroom, she has been energized to do the rest of the house.  So my job was to help her measure for tile.  (She fixed us corn chowder and baked us some of those Lobster House biscuits.  Delish.)  We got everything measured and ready to start the next project which is the utility room and kitchen.  She has lived without water to the ice maker for seventeen years.   Which would have driven me crazy.  But then, I am spoiled.

Becky wanted to read the first three chapters of the book I've written--so I gave them to her.  She loved it and begged for the fourth chapter, which I hadn't printed yet.   I handed her my computer and she read three more chapters.  I was encouraged.  She made me promise to mail the rest of it to her.  She and Carolyn always tell me the truth.  If I need to be straightened out, one of them will do it.

The manuscript has to got to go to Carolyn.  She is my English guru, and will correct the flaws.  This book has sat dormant for twenty years and I am just now energized to take the last steps to being done with it in spite of the editor that said he hated it after reading the first sentence.

I have the best friends in the world.  Amy Smith still writes me every few weeks just to encourage me.  Sally Casey calls as well.  Once I start on the list of friends, there is no where to stop.  Friends are one of life's greatest treasures.  We lean on each other in times of sadness an grief and rejoice with each other in times of joy.

Thank all of you for being my friends.

Talk about discouraged.  I took the first chapter of the book I have written to an editor who is also a professor of English.  He hated it.  He told me that the first sentence should state the problem, or the crisis, that the book intends to solve.  That there had to be dramatic emotion in the first paragraph for someone to continue to read.  After he read the first sentence, he said that if he had picked it up to read, he wouldn't have gone any further.  That he would have watched a ball game on TV instead.
He didn't have anything positive to say.

I read the first two chapters over the phone to Scott, and he told me, "Mom, you can write.  Don't let some knucklehead get you down."  He also said, "Take it to a woman editor."  And then he said, "I get it.  I was raised by women.  I understand how they think."  He was referring to the fact that until he was four, Ken was deployed most of the time and Pat, Becky and I were the only family he had.

I will pick myself up and find an editor that is interested in my subject matter.  When you write, your copy is like your baby.  You want everyone to say, "What a pretty child," even though it may be the ugliest kid you ever saw.  But you have to be aware that some people don't like kids.  Period.  And some editors are going to hate what you write from the git-go.

I know that will be true about what I write, and am ready to change what needs to be changed.  I just want someone to point me in the right direction and give me some constructive help.  "I hate it," isn't constructive.  I like the first chapter.  I have no idea how I would change it.  I guess that is what is important.  Being happy with what you have written.

I edit what I write (to all of you out there) three or four times until I have said what I want to say--and said it the way I want to say it.

It is now 24 hours later.  I went to the class on publishing and the lady speaker for the evening was the editor of a publishing company.  She liked what I had written, and took the first three chapters with her when the evening was over.  So I am now out of the dumps.

Maybe Scott was right.

1 John has some memorable verses that we all know.  2:16 gives us the three categories of sin that humans commit:  "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world."  1. sexual, lustful sin.  2. Stuff we think we have to have for happiness, greed.  3.  Pride. Who I am. What I do. What I say--Making a God of ourself.

And then there is 3:1-2  "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God...it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know...we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is."  We are going to get to see God!!

3:18 "My little children, don't love in words, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth."  John reiterates that it's not what you say, but what you do that shows love.

My favorite passage  is when John reassures those who are wondering, "Can this be true?  Am I really a child of God?"  John ends his letter by saying in 5:11-12 "And this is the record, that God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son.  He that has the Son has life, and he that doesn't have the Son of God doesn't have life."  John is saying: "I've told your the truth.  You can absolutely trust what I am telling you.  I have written the truth.  Recorded it.

Followed by my favorite verse: 5:13 These things I have written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God."  Once again he is giving us a written record of truth.

The thing I love about this verse is that:  1. He is writing to Christians:  "...to you that believe..."  2.  So that you can have total confidence:  "...that you may know you have eternal life..." 3. "...and that you may believe..."So that your belief grows stronger every time a you read John's words.

You believe, you know, you believe...  Knowing produces belief.  Belief produces knowing.  That's called growing in Christ.  Making yourself "...ready to give an answer to any person who asks a reason of the hope that is within you..." 1 Peter 15:3  I personally believe--and know what I believe.

God has left us two records:  1. He has left us the testimony of eye witnesses.  He has left us the writings of men of integrity who reported what they heard, and saw, and touched, and experienced. We call all of that "The Bible."

And,  2. He has left us the record of the physical world.  The earth, stars, sun, moon, the outer universe as well as life, animals, plants, humans.  Including the strata record of what has gone before us in ages past.  Bones of animals, plants, sea life, cities, and all kinds of archeological data.

Those two records tell us of the glory of God.  I can't imagine why some people never ask where all of it comes from.  Who never ask, "What is space--this limitless expanse that holds worlds, galaxies, planets, suns and stars?  Where did this vast, limitless space come from?  That question alone boggles the mind.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork.  Day unto day utters speech and night unto night shows knowledge.  There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard."  Psalms 19:1-4  The Bible speaks to us, and God's universe speaks to us as well.  We are without excuse if we ignore it.

God has spoken to us in these two records.  He has told us how to communicate with Him.  He has told us that He will always be with us.  He has given us a path to life, to eternity, to be with Him.

All we have to do is read the words in the written record to discover his plan.  But most of the world never reads the Bible.  The thing that I find impossible to understand is that most people who declare themselves Christians, don't read the Bible.

You can't know how to live unless you know His Words.  You can't know what He expects of you if you don't know His Words.  You can't know his plans for you if you are not in fellowship with Him.

Read God's words.  Find time, make time to read them.

1st John only has 5 chapters, and 95 short verses.  Yet in this message, he use the word "know" 30 times, and the word "write" (declare, record) over 15 times.  He is saying that he is writing, declaring, recording everything down as a record.  He wants his first hand account to be preserved.

In 1:4, he says, "...these things have I written unto you that your joy may be full."  He wrote with a purpose in mind.  He knew that the truth of the message he had to tell us would fill our hearts with elation--because under the law, we were always under condemnation.  But now, once and for all our sins are forgiven.  Paid for.  We have eternal life.

He follows up in verse 5, "This then is the message which we have heard of Him, (Jesus) and that we declare (write) unto you..."  John wants to tell what he knows in a permanent form.  Writing.

John then gives a number of ways that you can know for sure that God lives in you.  Vs. 6 says that what we say is meaningless.  It is what we do that counts. "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness (sin), we lie..."  And in vs. 7 "If we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another..."  We love our brothers in Christ.

Vs. 8-9 says, "If we say we have no sin...the truth is not in us...If we confess our sins...He will forgive and...cleanse us..."  John  is explaining what happens in our lives when we know Jesus.  We are changed.  We can examine ourselves for the proof of this change.  Saying?  Or doing.

Then in 2:1, John shows us his heart.  He calls us his little children--he wants to help us understand what we need to do.  "My little children, I am writing these things unto you that sin not..."

Finally John sums this all up by saying, "...hereby we know that we know him if we keep his commandments."  What are those commandments?  You can know you are a child of God if your desire is 1. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and 2. Love your neighbor as yourself.  Jesus only gave us those two.

John writes to us because he wants us to be sure.  He wants us to know.

The book of 1st John is one of my very most favorite books in the Bible.  It's short, but packed with first account authenticity.  John wrote what he wrote because he was there.  Every word is personal.

John witnessed the life of Jesus from age 30 to 33.  Those were the years of Jesus revelation of His earthly purpose.   His ministry.  The three years in which he revealed the reason that He came.  The ultimate Passover lamb of the Israelites--the people who ultimately rejected Him.  Who threw away God's mercy and forgiveness.  They wanted an earthly kingdom, not a heavenly one.  They wanted law, not grace.  The Messiah they wanted would overthrow the Romans.

But God's plan offered the Passover Lamb to all of us.  We get to come to the table.  We get to take, and eat--this is His body.  This is His blood.  And death no longer has it's sting.  The death angel will pass over us--just like it did the children of Israel in Egypt--when we accept His sacrificial Lamb for us.  It is no longer just for the Jews, God came to save the world.  Hallelujah.  We choose grace.

And John wants us to know everything about Jesus.  He uses the word "Know" 30 or more times in this tiny, short Epistle.  When my friend Carolyn calls and tells me something she has seen, touched or heard with her own hand, eyes or ears, I believe her.  I trust her.  Because I know her through and through. For 65 years.  That is how John wants us to experience his relationship with Jesus.  First hand information.  First hand knowledge.  First hand truth.

He begins in 1 John 1-2 "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life."  Ears, eyes, hands.  Three physical senses.  This is a first hand account of a real life event.  He continues in verse 3.  "That which we have seen and heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ."

John is saying to the entire world:  "I have good news.  You can talk directly, visit with, and know God.  He has a big house.  Come on in.  Jesus has died so that you can have this privilege."  It's a first hand invitation to each and every one of us.  All you have to do is believe.  And his is not the only first hand account.  Paul, Peter, Matthew, Mark, James...and many others tell us the same story.

The last plague that God sent was death to the firstborn son of every family in Egypt.  The only way to escape the "death angel" was to follow a specific procedure set by God Himself.

You found a perfect male lamb.  On the evening before this death decree was to occur, you killed the lamb, roasted it on an open fire, took the blood and smeared it on the sides of the front door.  Then you ate all of the meat, and burned anything that was left over.

You dressed all the family so that they would be ready to leave Egypt early the next morning.  Every one slept in their clothes--if they could sleep at all.  The only provision you took with you was unleavened bread.  (So it wouldn't mold.)  And then, amid the screams of the Egyptians--who had ignored God's warning--who were reacting to the death of their children, you fled for your lives.

Life is the most precious thing in the world.  And the concept of sacrificing one life for another's sin is first mentioned in Genesis.  It is our oldest written record.  The entire account leads up to the ultimate sacrifice for sin:  Jesus.

Adam and Eve:  God sacrificed an animal to cover their nakedness when they disobeyed him.
Cain and Abel:  Abel followed directions for a blood sacrifice.  Cain didn't and was punished.
Noah: Offered a burnt offering of every clean beast when they were once again on dry land.
Abraham: Obeyed God, willing to sacrifice Isaac.  But in the first picture of substitution, God spared Abraham's son and said: "My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering."

Which God did for us.  Sending His own son as a substitute lamb.  A Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.  Life.  The most precious sacrifice.  "No greater love has any man than to lay down his life for his brother."

The Passover dates to the Exodus event.  And now we commemorate when we: "Take, eat.  This is my body.  Do this in remembrance of me."  He is our passover Lamb.  He is our sacrifice for our sin.  He laid down His body for you and me.  That's sacrifice.

It is Thursday afternoon and I just realized that I forgot to write anything today.  Sorry.  It's too late now, because tonight is the class I told you about.  Publishing.

Don't give up on me.  I'll have something tomorrow.

I don't usually forget this.  I write at night, edit in the morning, and post.

But I got so busy editing the book I've written that I spent the entire day glued to my Mac. and never thought about another thing.

Good news, however.  After 16 hours of editing, it's done.  I'm excited.

I have enrolled in a publishing class.  Finally.  Finally I am going to do something about this book I have written.  Different people from different parts of the publishing fields are speaking for the next six weeks.  Last week, we heard from an author who is ranked number one in Oklahoma.  He was very self depreciating, telling about all of his failures.  It was so interesting.  And funny.

I learned that there are three ways to publish.  1.  The traditional way: get an agent who finds a publishing company who is willing to publish your book.  2.  Go straight to the publishers yourself.  3.  Self publish.

The first way is not possible for me.  I'm too old to be of interest to an agent.  They want to represent people who have already had some success, and want you to be young enough to have a future writing more books.  That's how they make their money.  I don't fit either of those criteria.

The second way has some interest for me in that there are lists out there of publishers who restrict their interest to certain limited fields of interest.  That would reduce the number of publishers who might be interested in what I have written to a manageable few.  They are looking for books that attract an identified audience.  Such as children's books, cookbooks, mysteries, and so forth.

But since I have no interest in making money from what I have written, the third choice is probably the one that I will pursue.  We'll see.  I'll make a decision at the end of the six lectures.

Just enrolling has pushed me to begin a final editing of what I have written.  Which is hard work.  Why, in a million years, would I think that I would be a writer.  I have only identified myself in that way for the last two years.  Up to then, I thought of myself as a teacher, a marimba player, a church pianist, a Marine's wife, mother, grandmother,  seamstress.  Not a writer.

Maybe I will be like Moses.  At the age of 80 (which occur in March) I might find that I can still make a difference.  Maybe God's not through with me yet?

That would be exciting.

God followed up on that first encounter that Moses had with Pharaoh.  God sent plagues--ten of them--to show Egypt just Who was in charge.  Pharaoh thought he was.  Not so.

God had been in charge all along.  But you have to wonder about the process God used to bring Pharaoh to his knees.  And the process of bringing Moses to faith and trust in the power of God.

Because when it was all over, after Pharaoh let the Israelites go, it wasn't really over at all.  The Israelites had forty more years of wandering around in the desert ahead of them.  And in the end, only two of them (Joshua and Caleb) would get to the promise land.  The people had left slavery, misery, poverty and brutality in Egypt. The only thing they got was freedom.  I think that should have been enough.  But they didn't.

Humans are seldom grateful for what they have.  The Israelites grumbled, complained and made Moses' life miserable.  Moses had led them to freedom.  They didn't appreciate it.

We are sometimes the same.  Wanting more.  Not appreciating what we have, but complaining about what we don't have.  Never enough.

Moses must have been totally frustrated.  His role as a leader was constantly buffeted.  When God gave Moses the law--the ten commandments--Moses returned to find the people, led by Aaron in Moses absence, worshiping a gold calf.  Talk about betrayal, that was the final straw.

Alone.  That must have been how he felt.  But God was with him, and Moses knew it.  Moses had come to rely completely on God.  Not on people, family or circumstances.

God is enough.  But sometimes, it takes difficult circumstances for us to realize that.  The old song, "Through it All" comes to mind:  Through it all, through it all.  I've come to trust in Jesus, I've come to trust in God..."

And that's all God ever wanted from us.

I'm sure that Moses, with all the assurances that God had given him, thought that he would march in and confront Pharaoh, tell him to let the Israelites go and Pharaoh would say, "Oh, okay."  But just the opposite happened.  Not only did Pharaoh say "No", but he said: 1:  "Who is this God?"  2: "Why should I listen to what you are saying?  I am the God around here."  And 3:  "I'm in charge and I will not let the Israelites go.  My word is law."

Pharaoh then commanded that the straw used to make bricks be eliminated and that the people be ordered to make more bricks than they had been making.  "I'll show you two upstarts who runs things in Egypt.  It isn't your God; that's for sure."

So not only had Moses angered Pharaoh, the people were angry as well.  "Things have gotten worse since you and Aaron showed up."  Which was true.

Moses was deflated, dejected, demoralized, despondent and depressed. He immidately asked God:  "Why have you brought this evil on your people?  Why did you send me here."  And I am sure he reminded God:  "I told you I wasn't the man for this job in the first place.  "I told you they weren't going to listen to me."

So God reminded Moses that He had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and now, he was appearing to Moses.  He told Moses that His name was Jehovah--the I AM God.  The one true God.  He told Moses that everything He had said He was going to do would happen.  That they would indeed return to Horeb to worship Him with all the people of Israel.

So Moses pushed on.  Trusting that the God who led him in would be the God who would lead him out.

If God has a job for you to do, you can be sure that He is going to see you through to the finish.

"Okay, I'll do it."  Moses agreed to go--but only after God agreed that Aaron (Moses' older brother) could be the spokesperson.  God would give Moses instructions on what to do; Moses would give Aaron God's message.  Then Aaron would communicate the message to the people or to Pharaoh.  Strange arrangement.  I'm sure Moses got strength from having Aaron in this with him.  It helps to have a friend beside you when you set out to change the world.

Why didn't God just leave Moses out of the equation altogether?  Why didn't God just call Aaron?  Because Moses had the Egyptian training in diplomacy that Aaron didn't have.  Moses had the background to deal with those muckity-mucks in the palace--with Pharaoh.  Aaron didn't.  Remember, Moses was raised as an Egyptian.  God had spent eighty years getting Moses ready for this job.  God chose Moses.  God's plan needed God's man.  Moses.

Moses understood the "Chain of Command" etiquette for making a decision in the real world.  He went to his father-in-law, Jethro the priest, and asked permission to return to Egypt.  To take his wife, (Jethro's daughter) and sons with him.  But Moses equivocated.  He didn't tell Jethro the real reason he was going.  Moses said, "Let me go, I pray thee, and return to my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they are yet alive."  In effect, "I need to go see my folks back home.  I bet they miss me."

This verse is one of the verses that makes me wonder if Jethro was a "Jewish" priest.  If he was, I  think that perhaps Moses would have told him the real reason he was going--that he was being sent by God to start a war with Pharaoh.

After everything is in place to leave, God finally gives Moses an important fact.  A fact that--if Moses had known it--would have made it much easier for him to agree to go in the first place.  God tells Moses, "Go, return to Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought your life."  Everyone (who could put Moses to death for the murder he had committed) was dead and gone.  That's a humongous fact.

The burden that was hanging over Moses' head was lifted.  But only after he agreed to the will of God.  Accepting God's will in our lives will always lift the burden of anxiety and fear.  He is God.  We either trust Him, or we don't.  Moses decided to trust Him and it made all the difference.

You've heard the phrase, "I'm going to put the fear of God in you."  I think that must have been Moses' condition at this point.  And then God said, "What do you have in your hand?"  Don't you think that Moses must have thought, "You know my name, you can cause a bush to burn without being consumed, you say you are God.  Surely you know a sheep hook when you see one?"

However, Moses answers, "It's a rod."  Then God told him to throw it down on the ground.  You have to give Moses credit, he did what the Voice said to do.  But when it turned into a snake, Moses took off running.  Who wouldn't?

But God called him back and said for him to pick the snake up by the tail--which anyone knows is definitely not how you pick up a snake.  Even I know how to pick up a snake.  But once again, Moses does what he is told to do--and is unharmed as the snake turns back into his rod.

By this time, Moses should have been convinced that this God of the Israelites was indeed the one and only true God.  But God gives him another sign, telling Moses to put his hand on his chest. Once again, Moses obeys, and his hand is covered with leprosy.  "Touch your chest again," God tells him.  Moses does, and is healed.  Moses must be convinced, but this is the point at which he gives God his final excuse.  He says, "O my Lord, I am a terrible speaker. "  This final excuse is indication that he is in line with what God wants him to do, but is not able to see how he is going to do it.

It's rather like when Esther said, "If I perish, I perish."  Moses probably figured he was a dead man.

God was justifiably irritated and said, "Moses, who do you think made you.  Who made your mouth, your eyes, your ears?  Don't you get it.  I am your creator.  I am all powerful.  So pull yourself together.  I will be with your mouth.  I will teach you what to say."  Or as my grandmother would have said when I was slow to react, "You git on now.  Git movin..."

Perhaps Moses knew more about God than I have given him credit for.  Jethro, his father in law, was a priest.  But was he a Jewish priest?  And if so, what was he doing in Midian.  The Jews were in Egypt.  You might want to read Exodus 18 and decide for yourself.  I'm not so sure that Jethro was.

When God (or our church) has something that needs to be done, we can usually give a million reasons why we are not the right person to do the job.  But they really aren't reasons, they are excuses.

Moses gave five excuses for why God had gotten it all wrong--for why his resume' didn't fit the bill for energizing, rounding up, and leading a bunch of slaves out of Egypt.  (My paraphrase)

1.  He was  nobody at this point in his life:  "Who am I that I should go?  Not me.  Wrong guy."
2.  He would have to explain why he was there: "What would I say to them anyway."
3.  He would have to explain who sent him: "This is your God's doing.  I just met Him."
4.  They wouldn't believe him.  They would say: "The Lord wouldn't speak to you.  You're nobody.  You've been gone 40 years. You're not one of us."
5.  He wasn't a good speaker:  "I'm not eloquent...I am slow of speech and have a slow tongue."

Every excuse He gave was just that, an excuse.  God was calling Moses.  Moses wasn't listening.

He had five excuses, but never even thought of giving God a legitimate reason why he couldn't go.  Moses actually had a valid reason not to go:  he was under indictment for murder.  If he was the one to go to Pharaoh, he would most probably be killed.  So, reasonably, God should choose someone to do this job that wouldn't be strung up at the git-go.  But God said, "I will be with you.  I'm God.  I'm not going to send you to do a job that I don't empower you to do."

That's what we usually forget.  God is the "doer."  We are the bush.  It is His power within us that enables us to do His work.  He will give us the words we need.

Perhaps the old Pharaoh was dead.  Perhaps there was a new Pharaoh.  Someone that Moses had grown up with in the palace?  Whatever, God had it all worked out.  And all of Moses' excuses were empty.

Here's the setting.  A desert.  Hot.  Surrounded by sheep that stink.  And like I said yesterday:  He was 80 years old when he saw the burning bush and approached it out of curiosity.  He was a nobody, expecting nothing from life.  He had no future.  No hope of anything better.  Nowhere to go.

In the middle of despair, loneliness, and depression, just when we think we are past our prime, sometimes God has to remind us that we aren't dead yet!  He can still use us.  From the moment Moses was placed in a basket in the bulrushes, God had a purpose for him.  It just took eighty years to get him ready for the job God had for him to do.

The first thing God did when He spoke from the burning bush was to explain the problem.  He told Moses that His people had been praying for years for Him to deliver them out of bondage, suffering, misery and oppression.  He then told Moses that the time had come to do that, and explained the plan.  Ending with these words:  "...therefore, I am going to send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."

"Whoa!!!  We just met."  That's surely what Moses felt--because Moses began to reason with this Voice.  Began to explain why this was never going to happen.  To explain that God had mistakenly appeared to the wrong man.  The conversation went something like this:
Moses: "Who do you think I am anyway?  What makes you think I would be able to go to Pharaoh and tell him that I've come to take all of his slaves out of Egypt.  This is not a good plan."
God:  "I am going to be with you.  You are going to come back here and serve me on this mountain, here at Horab, after you have brought all my people out of Egypt."
Moses:  "Me??  What am I possibly going to say to them to get them to listen?  You think that if I tell them that the God of their fathers has sent me that they are going to listen?  I don't think so.  They are going to ask me what the name of this God is.  Then what am I going to tell them!!"
God:  "Say to them:  I AM THAT I AM.  I AM has sent you to them.  Tell them I have heard their prayers. and am going to answer them.  Listen to me Moses, they will listen to you.  Pharaoh won't, but I'll take care of that problem."
Moses:  "This is insane.  They won't believe me.  I can't even talk very well.  I'm not eloquent, I speak slow and my tongue gets tangled up.  I'm not the man you are looking for."  (Continued...)

When Pharaoh's daughter found Moses, she decided to keep him.  He was just a baby, floating in a basket in the river.  Mariam, Moses sister, asked Pharaoh's daughter if she would like for her to find a wet-nurse to raise him--then ran and got Moses mother--who cared for him until he was weaned.  Which in those days could have been any number of years.  Everything Moses ultimately knew about God he probably learned from his mother during that time.  

He was raised by Pharaoh's daughter, surrounded by Egyptian law, gods, education, morals, culture and loyalties.   In reality, he was Egyptian.  Yes, he was Jewish by birth, but he wasn't necessarily a God follower.  There is nothing to indicate that.  He spent most of his life in the Egyptian palace where they worshiped many gods.  The Egyptians had a god for everything--lest they offend one.

Since Moses killed an Egyptian who was persecuting a Jewish man--we know that he had feelings for his people.   Perhaps he was torn between his two identities.  At the age of forty, he fled Egypt to escape Pharoah's anger for that murder--to live in the desert.    He was beaten down, in a strange land, with no future, and no hope of anything better than tending sheep.  He was 80 years old when he saw the burning bush and approached it out of curiosity.  He was a nobody, expecting nothing from life.

And then, he heard a voice, "Moses, Moses."  He probably looked around to see who was calling, and  in effect said, "I'm over here," perhaps he thought it was another sheepherder.  He certainly was not expecting someone to speak to him from a bush.  Certainly not God.  He didn't even know God.  But God spoke, and told him to take off his shoes, that he was on holy ground.  This is an extraordinary encounter.  Moses was confounded and probably frightened--since bushes don't speak.

But then, the voice identifies Himself in four ways and says, "I am the God of your birth father.  I am the God of Abraham.  I am the God of Isaac.  I am the God of Jacob."  Moses knew who these four people were, and suddenly realized: this was the voice of their God, speaking from this burning bush.   This was the God of his own people.  Speaking to him.  This voice had singled him out.  Called him by name.   This extraordinary Voice knew his name.  This God was real.  He was really, really real!!  

When God calls you, he always calls you by name.  He knew Moses.   He knows you.

So, here Moses is.  Surrounded by dumb, dirty sheep.  They weren't even his sheep.  They belonged to his father-in-law Jethro.  In a strange land with strange people--Midianites.  No TV.  No iPad.  No phone.  Not even a radio.  Borrrr...ing.  Sun, sheep, dirt, wind, rain...day after day.  Year after year.

I think the worst for me would have been that there were no people of his educational equivalency to discuss issues and ideas with.  Steel sharpens steel, but  Moses was surrounded by a people who had no educational background that was anywhere near the rich culture of Egypt--that Moses had left behind.  Left behind forever.

We gravitate toward people who have a similar background as ours.  Moses lost that.  We gravitate toward people who have similar belief systems as ours.  Moses lost that.  He pretty much lost everything he knew and cared about.  He's eighty years old and has no foreseeable future.  But God had allowed Moses to be saved from death twice.  First as a baby--hidden from Pharaoh's slaughter of Jewish male babies.  And second by letting him escape the Egyptians--who had a price on his head for murder.  God had prepared Moses for this moment in time.

When God appeared in the burning bush, the fact that the bush was burning was not an unusual occurrence.  I'm sure that lightening storms set off fires in bushes from time time.  Moses had probably seen dozens of burning bushes in the forty years he was tending sheep.  Then why did this particular bush catch his attention?  What was the difference?  It was just a bush.  On fire.

Moses was probably standing around watching his sheep,  doing nothing.  But after a while, he took note of the fact that this particular bush didn't burn out.  It kept burning.  So Moses went to investigate.  And that made all the difference.  As far as God was concerned, any old bush would do.  The thing that made the difference was that God was in it.

We--you and I--are just any old bushes.  The thing that gives us the power to do what we do is that God is in us.  Without him, we would just burn out and be useless.  Just another bush in the desert.  So when God calls you to do something for Him, remember that the power you have is from Him.  You don't have to depend on yourself.  You are just a bush.  God is the fire.