What's That in Your Hand?

 

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Then Moses answered, 

“But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, 

for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’” 

The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” 

He said, “A staff.” 

And He said, “Throw it on the ground.” 

So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, 

and Moses ran from it. 

But the Lord said to Moses, 

“Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”

—so he put out his hand and caught it, 

and it became a staff in his hand—

“that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, 

the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, 

has appeared to you.”

Exodus 4:1-5 ESV

For many years now, an author named Terry Hershey sends his weekly write-up Sabbath Moment to my email. His insights are profound and touch a deep spot in my soul. This week he writes about pilgrimage.

We are, everyone of us, on a daily pilgrimage, Terry writes.

I have often described the journey I am on as sacred, although more often than not, I lose sight of the truth that my travels serve a kingdom purpose. 

I am on a divine assignment. This should make me see the awesomeness of every step I take, every stop, every choice I make. But human as I am, I don't. 

The amazing thing is that God doesn't take it against me. He never gives up. He doesn't get tired of repeating the invitation... to walk with Him, to let Him lead the way.

At a recent Monday night Bible study, Hernan's topic was on Exodus 4:2, the account where God called Moses to appear before the powerful Pharaoh of Egypt with an important message.

It was a special invitation to go with God on, yes... a sacred journey.

Moses refuses. Gives all kinds of excuses.

So God asks him a simple question: What's that in your hand?

A question God asked to show Moses that in the midst of his feelings of inadequacy, God is his sufficiency.

One of God's names in the Bible, after all, is God Almighty, El Shaddai in Hebrew.

He is indeed the All-Sufficient One.

Moses' pilgrimage actually starts way before he was born.  

The circumstances surrounding his birth are nothing less than awesome.

Moses was born at a time when Pharaoh decreed that all baby boys born to the Hebrews had to be killed. A population explosion in the Hebrew quarters of Egypt was a growing problem, and the powerful ruler found a way to address it. 

Kill their baby boys was the order.

It is a popular story that needs no retelling. But for purposes of continuity, let me summarize the events of his life in the next paragraphs.

Jochebed, a Hebrew woman married to Amram, gave birth to a baby boy. When the baby turned three months old, his parents made a basket out of papyrus reeds, placed the child in it, and let the basket float down the Nile river.

Pharaoh's daughter who was bathing nearby, sees the baby in the basket. Realizing he is one of the Hebrew babies marked for death by her father's decree, she decides to adopt him as her own. She names him Moses, for he was drawn out of the water.

Miriam, Jochebed's daughter who was watching the baby, offers the services of a wet nurse. The princess agrees, and Moses ends up being cared for by his own mother.

Eventually, Moses is given back to Pharaoh's daughter who brings him up as an Egyptian prince in the royal courts of the king.

Fast forward. Moses is now 40 years old. One day he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. In anger, Moses kills the man. Some days later he realizes that this incident is not a secret as he thought it was. In fear for his life, Moses flees to Midian, leaving behind forty years living as an Egyptian prince in Pharaoh's palace. 

He spends another 40 years in the dry desert lands of Midian where he learns the lowly life of a shepherd.

Moses is on a divine pilgrimage though he doesn't know it yet.

God appears in a burning bush and gives him an important assignment: to go back to Egypt and bring the Israelites out.

Moses bargains with God, using inadequacy as an alibi. But God doesn't let him get away with his excuses. Finally, God asks Moses that famous question, "What's that in your hand?

It was a walking stick, a staff.

In Exodus 4:17, God tells Moses, 

And take in your hands this staff, with which you shall do the signs. 

Through this staff, God performed mighty miracles all throughout their journey out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.

There was, however, an important ingredient before the miracles could manifest.

Moses had to yield his heart to God. 

The staff by itself could do nothing. But in the hand of a man whose heart was fully submitted to God, the staff became the means by which mighty miracles happened.

Forty years in the wilderness of Midian emptied this man's heart of all pride in his royal upbringing. 

The wilderness is always God's best schoolroom to instill humility in His children. 

In the wilderness, Moses is stripped of all his previous concept of personal fame, glory, power, and grandeur. He becomes a simple nobody, a common shepherd. He is genuinely surprised that he would be chosen for such an awesome task as appearing before the mighty ruler of Egypt.

Gone is the former prince's illusion of greatness. 

Moses, in humble obedience, limps into the palace of Pharaoh, armed only with a walking stick and a stammering tongue.

I cannot help but smile at this almost comical picture: an 80-year old insecure shepherd, standing before the great and mighty ruler.

The emptying process was the very thing God wanted to see in Moses. At 80 years of age, the man was now ready for his assignment for the next 40 years of his life: the deliverance of the Israelites from the land of slavery.

Moses needed a walking stick because at his age, he could no longer walk without one. 

But it was this very weakness that God used to display His power.

The life of Moses speaks to me, reassuring me that the past years of my life have a purpose for my latter years. 

Just like Moses, I grew up in security and confidence. I was raised in a loving home, and received an excellent education. The man I married was kind, our marriage was strong. 

But somewhere in the years leading to my 40th year, God brought me to a very low place in my life journey.

It was an emptying process, the kind I never saw coming.

At the ripe, young age of 20 I had given my life to Jesus as my Lord and Savior. For some years I basked in the glory of my accomplishments. Not out of pride, but in confidence that with God on the throne of my life, I was doing well. 

He held the reins, I trusted and obeyed.

I served Him in various ministries. 

As campus volunteers with the Grad Team of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Ernie and I offered our talents and abilities to Him. 

I was a good wife... a good mother... a good daughter... a good sister.

In church, a trustworthy treasurer. a pianist, a Sunday school superintendent. 

My husband and I led a young couples group for many years. 

I was our church's school principal for 18 years.

I was a good everything.

I did all things to the best of my ability.

Mediocre was not in my vocabulary.

But God had a better plan.

The wilderness happened. 

One wilderness season after another.

I lost my footing. The mooring where my ship's ropes were tied began to shift. I found myself adrift.

I didn't know where or when it would all end.

Then in my 70th year, just three years ago, God gave me a breakthrough.

For privacy purposes, I cannot go into details. But God knows what He did, and He alone deserves the glory.

The wilderness has a purpose. The emptying is needed before one can be filled.

This November, our family will remember the day Ernie went home to heaven eighteen years ago. 

Has it been that long? I have been a widow for 18 years already!

Sometimes I ask: "Is the wilderness season finally over?" 

Nobody knows for sure. Who can tell what lies beyond the bend? 

The truth is we never really stop learning as long as we're alive.

In this divine pilgrimage I'm on, life has not been easy. But I have not walked alone.

Between the dark valleys and lonely desert caves, Abba Father has brought me to places that heal and replenish.

Times of refreshing, comfort and relief.

Terry Hershey writes of the Shawnee and Chippewa people who went on hunts or vision quests. In their long journeys, each traveler would carry in a small rawhide pouch various tokens of spiritual power (a feather, a claw, a pebble, or a shell...), reminders of the energies that sustain all of life. They carry these talismans as a way of recollecting sources of healing, or bounty, or beauty, that they have encountered in their earlier travels.

We too carry a kind of pouch as we continue on our travels, whether we are aware of it or not. In certain stops along my journey, difficult or pleasant, I have picked up stones of remembrance, little things that serve as mementos of where I've been.

Women have something like this in their bags--a pouch that contains a bottle of healing oil, a vial of perfume, a cream for insect bites, a small can of mints. Tried and tested remedies for instant relief.


Sometimes we also carry with us an invisible pouch, filled with, in Terry Hershey's words, a need for control and answers for closure.

But if we go through life always wanting to be sure of the next step, and having ready answers for our questions, the journey ceases to be meaningful. Discouragement and frustration become our traveling companions.

It is in the uncertainty in our journey that trust in God finds its context.

Mr. Hershey's closing words in his offering for this week reflect what I also long for as I journey:

But what if? What if the tokens in...[our] pouch are not a magic wand to undo life, but instead, the power and the freedom to embrace the life we have been given.  And to see in this life, this day even in the very muddle of the ordinary, even in the very chaos of the ordinary gone awry, the permission to experience a whiff of the holy.

That God is not waiting until we have it all figured out.

The gift of life is in this present moment.

Yes. That's it. We can choose. This is an invitation to participate--and invest--in this life. To bring all that I am to the table of this moment.

To invest my heart.

To be a witness for integrity and justice.

To create space for healing and restitution.

To spill light where I can.

What Barbara Kingsolver calls a "conspiracy with life." 

Easy? No. Somedays, I feel very broken. Broken and dispirited. And I don't have the words. And I don't have the strength.

So... what possible difference can we make?

Well, this is interesting. You see, compassion... and healing... are not mutually exclusive. The light we share is born in those broken places...

This is not a test to pass...

This is permission; the invitation and the affirmation to be, and to live, wholeheartedly and kindheartedly, the truth of who I am.

It is from this self--the broken or wounded self--that compassion and kindness and tenderness and empathy and healing and reconciliation can flow. (an excerpt from Terry Hershey, Sabbath Moment, October 19, 2026) 

I have learned the beauty of embracing the life I've been given.

And so the question remains. What do I have in my hand? 

At this point, I can easily come up with many answers. 

But the most compelling one is this: I have God's hand in mine. That's what I have. 

And for me... that's more than enough.

For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand;

it is I who say to you,

"Fear not, I am the One who helps you."

-Isaiah 41:13

What stones do I carry in my pouch?

At 73, I have the sweet assurance that I am holding on to God's hand in the remaining years of my life.

And in my pouch, I carry the little gemstones I have picked up along the way, precious reminders of God's faithfulness.

And yes, I've often asked myself if there is still a grand purpose that Abba Father is waiting to fulfill.

At 80, Moses' life had just begun! And I'm not even 80 yet.

So, theoretically, it's not over until it's over. 

The best wine is served only at the end. God sends the former rains for the planting season. Then there are the latter rains that fall when the crops are ready for harvest. 

All the days ordained for me were written in His book before any of them came to be.

I take all of these spiritual lessons to heart. 

In my daily pilgrimage, I want each step to be a holy moment with God.

Abba Father, I pray that as I live out the rest of my days, knowing I am holding Your hand in mine, I will continue to live it with a sense of divine purpose. The wilderness seasons of my life have served me well, emptying my heart and filling it with meaning. Thank you for the places of rest and replenishment along the way.  Use me to be a place of tenderness, empathy, healing, and restoration that others can stop at and find refuge.