Moses, God, and Lord Xenu

"Who has made man's mouth?" - I AM to Moses.

When I began my devotions about five minutes ago, I opened to this passage. My blog entries almost always occur this way: I open my Bible to read a little and am struck by something really profound. When I'm looking for stuff to write about, the Bible serves as a book of endless possibilities - it's so full of truth, adventure and insights into interplay of human and divine. It's simply the reason I blog. And the process of blogging enables me to better understand, digest and remember what I'm reading, so I recommend it to anyone who wants to know God better.

But it didn't take me long to find something really profound today. Here I am reading the exchange between Moses and God in chapter 4 of Exodus, and Moses is expressing that he's not really a good choice to speak to the people, using the excuse that he's not eloquent. To put it in it's modern context he's saying something like, "But God" (nasally whine) "I'm not a 'dynamic' speaker." (For an entire entry on why I hate the modern usage of "dynamic" in Christian circles check out the entry "Dynamic" - original eh?)

God's not having it. He does a serious "No duh!" with Moses as he points out, "Moses who has made man's mouth?" I love this. In God's divine humor, he highlights the ridiculous world Moses is living in in his mind. Moses has just seen the burning bush, heard God's voice, had his staff turn into a snake which he fled from (ha!), had his hand turn leprous (fun) and then been healed. You'd think that the last thing Moses would be concerned about would be the fact that he's not "eloquent." But no, Moses is to prideful in his insecurity.

Moses is so much like me. I am so quick to forget all that God has done in my life when faced with any sort of challenge, obstacle or parking ticket. For me public speaking is always a truly terrifying experience to anticipate, but I can honestly say I have not died yet. "I'm not dead yet (Monty Python)."

But I question pretty much anything that God asks me to do that goes outside of my little controlled universe of my imagining. No wonder God got a little miffed with Moses, and he probably gets a little exasperated with me. That's why I love God's humorous response, "Umm Moses, did you know that I made your mouth?" The very vehicle that Moses was afraid to use was God's invention.

I don't want to miss the irony here. It's really potent. Moses was afraid to speak, and every word he spoke was going to come from God. God goes on to harp on this ironic theme by stating that he will be with Moses' mouth. Come on Moses! Aren't you getting it? You're nothing in this equation of Man + God.

And that's exactly the difficulty I cause all the time. I question God's part of the equation, forgetting that my side isn't so hefty after all:

Me - "God I don't want to get up and go to work."

God - "Um, how, pray (God likes sounding religious!), are you going to get up?"

Me - "Duh, I'm going to sit up and get out of bed."

God - "That's what I thought, need I say anymore."

Me - "Yeah!"

God - "How do you think you're going to sit up?"

Me - "With my stomach muscles, Jeez!"

God - "Did you almost say "Jesus" in an exasperated fashion? You know I smite people for less than that! Just kidding. No, who do you think made your 'chiseled' abdomen that enables you to sit up?"

Me - "Um, you. And did you really give me a sweet six-pack this morning?"

God - "No. But I did make all those muscles under your cellulite addition."

Me - Thanks for the sarcasm as always God.

God - No problem.

That's what I love about being in a relationship with the God of the entire universe and beyond. He's bigger than Lord Xenu, the alien that conquered all the other aliens in the universe, dumped their bodies on earth, caught their souls as they rose from earth in special soul-sucking ships, indoctrinated their disembodied souls with a made up history (known to us as "human history") and then let them loose on earth where they found some monkeys and brainwashed them into being intelligent. For this insightful anecdote I thank L Ron Hubbard, outlining some of the key principles of Scientology.

Not only is God bigger than Lord Xenu, he loves to take me back to the basics when I'm scared, fearful and anxious. He reminds me that my world really isn't all that real, and that his world is. It's really comforting. And isn't that what the Gospel is all about anyway: opening our eyes to reality.

So I hope if your worried about something today, that you'll remember who invented your brain that you're using to worry with. I'm sure I'll forget. But God is patient. More patient than Lord Xenu anyway.