I wasn’t always the eloquent orator you see before you
today. When I was a kid I had a speech impairment. And when I say a kid, I mean
from age 19 on down. Once I got to college, I hooked up with some speech
therapy (shout out to Linda Day) and got it taken care of.
Coincidently, during these same formative years I attended
church, from one to three times a week, depending on the current church schedule.
Never missed unless we were out of town, which only happened about once a year.
Back to the speech impediment, it was pretty hard to
understand certain words I would say, so I’d talk around it. But in church,
there was always a lot of reading out loud, so there was no getting around it
there. My condition was obvious to everyone in church.
This church would have an attendance in the low 20s in the
good years, and half that during the lean years. We went through a lot of
pastors – some very good ones, and none that were all that bad. Although I have
to say, most of the sermons didn’t really seem to have much to do with me or my
life experience.
Wouldn’t it have been awesome if there was some story in the
Bible that a pastor could have shared with me that would have provided me with
some encouragement with that speech problem? Ironically, there is, but I didn’t
come across it until I was in my 30s. It’s about one of the really obscure Old
Testament prophets, you’ve probably never heard of him… what was that name
again? Oh year, it’s Moses.
That’s right, Moses. Second only to Jesus himself as the
coolest guy in the Bible. Baby-basket float tripping Moses. The stick changing
to a snake that can kill your stick changing to a snake Moses. That guy.
The Moses who is so tough he beats people to death
unintentionally- that’s like Mel Gibson cool, and I don’t mean the drunk
anti-Semite, I’m talking about Mel back in the Lethal Weapon days. There’s a new
movie coming out this weekend called Exodus – Gods and Kings. Moses is the lead
role, and who did that get to play him? Batman, that’s who. The last time there
was a big movie about Moses, they cast the spokesman for the NRA in the role –
that’s how tough Moses is.
But for all of his awesomeness, when God called Moses, Moses
told him that he had the wrong guy. Go ask someone else, God. That speech
problem was his primary excuse. Exodus chapter 4, verse 10, he said “I am slow
of speech and slow of tongue.”
God’s reply? Hey, your brother Aaron is a good talker. If
you have any trouble, you can just get him to do the talking for you.
OK, when I was a kid, I would have totally put that verse on
my brother. “Yo Tim, Exodus 4: 15-16. You’re up. Time for you to do some
talking for me buddy. I’ll tell you what to say.” I would have used that daily.
Anyway, Moses gave in to God’s request and went on to do
impressive stuff. If you want to know more, you can watch the movie. Unfortunately
for me, I didn’t learn about Moses’s speaking problem soon enough to do me any
good. I guess I was counting on the church services and daily Bible devotional
readings too much – I should have done some study on my own. Depending on the
print size, the Bible’s a good 1,000 pages long. It takes some time to take it
all in.
This time a year, we hear a lot about what amounts to around
three pages of the Bible. Great story – I’m certainly not going say it shouldn’t
get its due. But let’s be open to what else the scripture has to offer. Let’s
pray.
Gracious God, we give you thanks that we still have
available the words of the Bible that were written thousands of years ago. We
recognize that it is easier to read than it’s ever been. Help us to find the
words to help us better live our lives, and find ways to share scripture with
others in a way that it is helpful to them. Thy will be done. Amen.
