Devotion - Monday, April 19

Exodus 18:13-27 is a section of scripture I should have read repeatedly over the weekend. It would have been suitable for the LCM Leadership Team, as we considered next year’s programming for LCM. It could have been helpful yesterday afternoon as the Directing Committee poured over the report of the Quadrennial Review Team.

In this section of Exodus, the father-in-law of Moses observes that Moses is spending many hours a day settling disputes among the people. “Is this your job?” he asks Moses. Finally, a system is put in place whereby others are set to judge small items while Moses returns his attention to teaching all the people God’s statutes.

This is not merely an attempt to get myself out of more work – it is a lesson for all of us. In our attempts to serve Christ, we sometimes suffer from the mistaken notion that service to Christ means “service everywhere.” We fail to remember that Christ calls each of us, but that Christ calls us to a particular kind of service. We are not called to perform every service, rather those for which we are perfectly suited.

In essence, we are ignoring the calling of Christ when we ignore the particular call which is ours. We abandon what it is that God is asking of us, when we try to accomplish that which is a better match for the gifts given to another.

Yes, it is sometimes difficult to know exactly what it is that we have been called to do. That is another topic for discussion. For today, let it be enough to remember that we cannot be all things to all people. Can need to remember even Moses had to set limits on what he was going to attempt to do. In so doing, he better served the God whom he loved. This is also true for us.