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I had just finished watching a Gospel music program on TV the other day and I reclined back in thought. I remembered when that group was just a blip on the radar, barely making it, but carrying a burning passion to carry the Gospel in the way they knew best, in singing and songwriting.

Have you ever watched someone as they grace ‘the big stage,’ perhaps preaching from the pulpit of the latest mega-church or performing their latest hit with a microphone or a guitar in hand, and you think to yourself, I wish God could use me that effectively? That He would just impart that exceptional wisdom or gift that could inspire many?

Certainly that has crossed our minds at some point, and then, perhaps we quickly cede to the nay saying voice we carry, “God could never use ME that way.” But could He? It’s easy to get caught up in the glamour of how others are used of God and we imagine ourselves in that role – with their gift.

What is your gift? What unique gift has He created in you to facilitate His purpose in your life? I think our discovery and calling of our gifts quite commonly parallel the Mt Sinai conversation Moses had with God. There are many great studies in these few passages, but we’ll stay on topic here.

God shows us a need and then makes a request. God said in Exodus 3, “I have seen the misery of my people… I have heard them crying out….and I am concerned about their suffering. I have come down to rescue them…… So now go. I am sending you to deliver my people from Pharaoh.”

Moses said what many of us have likely said before.  “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” Who am I? Why me? Certainly, God, you had someone else in mind here. And there was some legitimate cause for Moses to doubt. He, a shepherd, should go ask the ruler of a powerful nation to compromise his economic balance by releasing his slave labor? Let’s not forget that Moses had personally escaped two death warrants from this palace, first as a baby and then as an adult, for murder. Then God gave Moses specifics: who to talk to first and what to say.
So, after Moses recognizes the peoples’ needs, and hears details on how to carry out the plan, he asks that wonderful question “What if they don’t listen or believe me, or say you didn’t appear to me?” Is this our way of stalling, asking God, ‘are you sure?’

Identify your gift. God replies to Moses with perhaps one of His most important questions here, “What’s in your hand?” Moses, what’s your gift? Moses, what is it that you already excel in?
What’s in your hand? The only certainty here is if we don’t find our gift and be willing to use it, we likely will never know what He has planned our mission to be. What are you naturally skilled or gifted at? In some cases, others see our gifts before we do. Ask someone close to you, what’s my gift? Don’t be scared of the answer. And, if you need to watch yourself through those ‘new eyes’ for a bit just to be sure; it’s okay, see how you like it.

For Moses, it was simple. He was a shepherd so he carried a shepherd staff. God told him to throw it on the ground. It became a snake and he ran from it. Moses was afraid of snakes or he would not have run.

Using our gift may require overcoming fear. The snake was restored to a staff once Moses overcame his fear and grabbed its tail. Moses wasn’t done, however, and it is really nice to know that even when we carry our fair share of doubts, God is patient with us and will give us as much clarity as we need.

Moses, “Lord, I am slow of speech and tongue”. You’re asking me to speak here, and I’m not that person. I’m not the one who takes charge, or speaks in front of an audience. The silly thing is we forget that God already knows where we lack confidence or where we might even lack ability. He knows this before He makes these requests. So Moses just needed a reminder, as we often do.

God, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? In other words, I already know that, and that, and that, and anything else you want to throw in my way. Let’s go already!

God’s next statement – my personal favorite portion of the story – is in Exodus 3:12. “Now go. I will help you speak and I will teach you what to say.” Moses, here’s your formula:  1.) Go, 2.) I will help you speak, 3.) I will teach you what to say. If we are willing to test faith’s waters and just go, stepping out on His words alone, then He will fill in the gaps with courage to carry out his request and then the words with which to speak.

My personal gift is in music. While I may have specific skills in music, my vision for it needs to align with God’s, not with what others may be doing with their similar gifts. And, God has responded in detail, giving me a passion to arrange music in ways that reaches out to all worship audiences in inspiration to lift up Christ.

Whether His scope for my gift is to remain focused in my congregation, or be distributed through many channels on a broad scale, or even simply relegated to the piano in my living room, by being faithful to His call for my gift, I will unleash His passion and purpose in my life.

Moses could NEVER have imagined the incredible gift of leadership that God saw. He had problems speaking, had some very visible fears and a past which littered his path with doubts. But his obedience to use his gift as God called on it, broke open a fountain of miracles that very few stories can rival.

That same staff was raised to deliver horrific plagues upon Egypt. It parted the great Red Sea liberating the trapped Israelites. It turned a dry desert rock into a pure water fountain from which the entire nation could drink. When that staff was raised over a battlefield it ensured their victory against much mightier enemies. It facilitated many miracles, each a testament to his gift and its preordained divine purpose. Let’s not forget that it is widely accepted that this aging shepherd, beginning this exhaustive ministry while in his eighties, also authored the first five books of the bible.

God may call on us to change the world for many, as in the case of Moses. Or, He may call on us to change the world for one person. Either way, He has granted each of us with unique purposeful gifts and He’s waiting for us to answer the call. What’s in your hand?

Previous Articles:

• Does God Really ‘Feel’ Me?
• Power of a Testimony
• Finding Relevance through Biblical Characters: Job
• Finding Relevance through Biblical Characters: Introduction
  

In this week's Relief Recommends, Relief fiction editor Alan Ackmann praises author Alice Munro and her many gifts to the genre of short fiction.

I’m going to pick up on some trendy Olympic terminology and propose that every editor, I suspect, has a kind of literary dream team—a set of writers whose work they not only admire, but delight in, and with whom we would consider it a privilege to work.  For most editors, working with some (okay, most) of these writers is nothing but a pipe dream—that is, unless Thomas Pynchon comes out of seclusion, or James Joyce, John Steinbeck, or F. Scott Fitzgerald come out of, you know, death.  But others writers are more contemporary, and working with them is still tantalizingly plausible.  One of my personal favorites, and a woman whom I consider one of the best writers working today, is Alice Munro.  

A Canadian Born writer whose work regularly appears in Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The O. Henry Awards, and countless other prestigious venues, Munro is best known for some of her most recent collections—most notably her two most recent books: Runaway and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. To my knowledge, she has not written a well-known novel; like Chekhov, her gifts are those of a sprinter not a marathon runner.  In Munro’s case, however, a short story (whether a brief or lengthy one) often has the depth and complexity of a novel, rendering their length considerations somewhat moot.

There is much that is impressive about Munro’s stories.  First and foremost is Munro’s handling of time.  Oftentimes, a character in a Munro story can simply wander through a town, and what they encounter triggers memories and experiences, allowing Munro to reveal an entire history or culture through the character’s associations, and to do it so slyly that the writer does not realize what has happened until after the story is finished.  This frequently makes Munro’s stories structurally complex, requiring both attentiveness and patience.  It also means that Munro’s stories are more prone to dipping into their character’s inner lives, explaining their motivations and thoughts (in contrast to more distant, fly-on-the-wall type writers).  Even though lengthy inner monologues and exposition are often risky for a story—they are easily glossed over, and lack the immediacy of scene—these devices are well-suited to Munro’s gifts, and she makes using them look effortless.  

In contrast to their structural sophistication, the premises for her stories are often quite simple—a young girl takes a train to Toronto, a college student meets the man she’ll marry, a traveling salesman makes an impromptu visit to a former flame—but their emotional landscapes are textured, surprising, individual, and frequently heartbreaking.  Each story, each conflict, arises fully from the characters’ desires and limitations, the complexity of their emotions often far outstripping that of their premises.   

Because of this aesthetic, Munro’s characters are sometimes startlingly recognizable.  Often, by the end of an Alice Munro collection, I get the sense of having encountered people who are both completely familiar and at the same time completely mysterious.  That’s characterization at its finest.

Of the Alice Munro collections I’ve read, my favorite is The Beggar Maid, and this is also the collection I would tell a Munro novice to read first.  Like any favorite book, my reasons for liking it are at least partially personal: I first encountered The Beggar Maid in graduate school, when I was also first realizing what reading was all about—what it could be.  The book features ten stories about two different women—Flo and Rose—and their friendship over decades.  Although the characters interweave, it is not entirely accurate to call these “linked stories”—each stands alone, and together they are neither as contrived nor as densely self-referential as many contemporary “linked” collections.  Of the Munro stories in that book, the title story is my favorite. When I first read it, I had recently finished Raymond Carver’s Where I’m Calling From, and Munro’s lushness and clarity, when contrasted against Carver’s very different gifts of sparseness and distance, was especially dazzling.

In the next few weeks and months, I’ll occasionally post profiles of writers on Wednesdays—both because they are good (the writers, I mean, not the Wednesdays) and because these profiles might give you an idea of what kind of fiction we’re looking for here at the journal.  So once you’ve finished reading the latest edition of Relief, give Alice Munro a look.  

As a final note, even though Alice Munro would probably play point guard on my personal dream team (point guard is a basketball position, right?) that doesn’t diminish the writers we’ve already asked to join our little pick-up game.  After all, discovering a new fantastic writer is one of the only things better than working with a familiar one.  And I feel like, in the past two years, we’ve certainly done our fair share of discovering.       

Previous Articles: 

• One Brick at a Time
• Stuff Other Than Writing
• Using Setting Wisely in Fiction
• The Importance of Characterization
• Introducing Our Crafting Fiction Blog Series
• The Moral of the Story Is...