Staff or Stick?

“How refreshing to know You don’t need me…how amazing to find that You want me…”

(Casting Crowns, "In Me")

In Exodus 15:22, we find Moses leading Israel out from the Red Sea.  God had just instructed Moses to stretch out his staff over the sea, and the sea parted in the middle.  (Let me add some emphasis there, in case you didn’t catch how crazy that is.)  The sea PARTED, with a WALL OF WATER ON THE RIGHT AND LEFT, and Israel passed through on dry ground!!    So. Awesome.

God rescued the Israelites from the pursuing Egyptian army.  After a song of thankfulness, complete with tambourines and dancing, we come to verse 22:

“Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur.  For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter.  (That is why the place is called Marah.)  So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What are we to drink?’

Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood.  He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.”   (Exodus 15:22-25)

I don’t want to focus on the fact that Israel seemed to forget the power of their God only three days after He parted the Red Sea.  I don’t want to dwell on the fact that Marah doesn’t only mean “bitter,” but it also has deeper meaning in Hebrew of “deliberately obstinate and defiant disobedience.”  I want to write about the piece of wood.

Ray Vander Laan points out that Moses carried in his hand a seemingly significant stick (staff).  We are first introduced to it in the Bible in Exodus 4, when God has it turn into a snake (Exodus 4:1-5).  We then see that God tells Moses to take the staff with him, “so that you can perform miraculous signs with it” (verse 17).  When Moses stretched out his hand with the staff, hail fell to the ground (Exodus 9:23), locusts appeared all over Egypt (Exodus 10:13), and the Red Sea parted and closed (Exodus 14:21, 27).

So, why didn’t God ask Moses to use that same staff to make the water drinkable? 

Maybe because He wanted to remind Moses that the staff was not important.

The God behind the staff was.

The LORD showed Moses a “piece of wood,” sometimes translated as tree, log or stick.  You can’t get more ordinary than a piece of wood.  And through something that ordinary, God accomplished a miracle.

“God not only uses ordinary things that in and of themselves have no ability to accomplish the miraculous, he also uses ‘ordinary’ people to accomplish His purposes.”   

(Ray Vander Laan, “Fire on the Mountain”, p. 48)

Ah – what a great reminder for me as I have started another school year of teaching! 

May I never think that specific lesson plans or books or teaching methods are the way to a “successful” school year.  May I realize my brokenness and inabilities will only serve to highlight God’s work in and through my life. 

I hope that no Israelite looked at the stick and thought, “Wow.  What an awesome stick!”  They had to recognize the God behind the miracle.

I also hope that no one looks at any of my life and praises me…I hope that they are able to see past me to the God who enables me to will and to act according to His good purpose (Philippians 2:13).  (And the God who loves me in spite of my failures, which are many!)

I pray that this year I would be able to see God do some amazing things in my family, my friends, my school, and my own life.  I've asked Him to help me become more of a God-lover and a people-lover (not a people-pleaser).  And I'm excited to see what He will do.

Because, let's face it.  He is the one who will do it.  (I Thessalonians 5;24)

He doesn't need wood to make water sweet or a staff to split the sea.
He doesn't need people to tell the world about Himself.
He doesn't need me to teach my students.

How refreshing to know He doesn't need us!

How amazing to find that He wants to work through us.