Exodus 4:2
Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”

Sometimes, what challenges us to move the most is exactly what makes us the most immovable. We get so overwhelmed by the truth we’ve encountered that we find ourselves lost in a maze of introspection and self-analysis. It isn’t long before we are sitting in the same place, only now with the knowledge that we shouldn’t be in the same place. Ignorance, it would seem, really can be bliss, and knowledge can feel overwhelming and overrated. This is exactly where I found myself after reading Radical by David Platt, the kind of book that you read and instantly know is true and also impossible to live (you can read more about the book here). How, in light of the incredible poverty in the world and selfishness in our culture, can one person, or one family, really make a difference?

As the B99 (that’s Wendy, my Better 99%, for all you newbies to TBC) and I sat and talked through it (she had read it one week before me), we both found ourselves asking the obvious: what do we do now? Do we sell everything we own? Some of what we own? None of what we own? Do we ravage our closets and throw all our clothes in the car and stand on the side of the road in a poor neighborhood and give them away? Do we {gulp} turn off the satellite and pull out the rabbit ears? Worse, do we give the TVs away?

It’s not hard to find yourself frozen in the face of truth, a deer in the headlights of an approaching car, scared to move and yet knowing if you don’t, you’re toast. Now, more than ever, I’m thankful for a God Who focuses more on what we have than what we don’t, and on what we can do more than what we can’t. I found myself feeling like Moses, who had heard the Voice in the bush telling him that he would be leading a couple million captives out of slavery and into a land that would be better than they could have ever imagined. High callings really do all sound the same and require the same: they’re all impossible and all of them require people who can’t do the impossible to be a part of them. And so, Moses stood frozen in front of the high calling he’d received, his humanity motionless in the bright lights of the divine, destined to remain still because the call to move was too overwhelming.

It is at that precise moment when God asked Moses a question that snapped him back to reality. The only question, really, that could get Moses moving again. “What’s that in your hand?”

What we have is so much more valuable than what we don’t. We can offer what we don’t have all day long – even with good intentions – but in the end it is what we do with what we have that matters. A bird in the hand really is better than the two in a bush somewhere that I may never be able to do anything with, and I am more convinced now than ever before that the culture of the American church is all about promising to God what He has yet to entrust us with.

“When I get a raise, I’ll give some of it away” isn’t all that different from saying “When I’m a dog, I’ll be nicer to cats” because neither one of them has happened yet. Asking us what’s in our hands forces us to make real decisions about trust, instead of dreaming about future decisions that don’t actually cost us anything. It is a question that I both love and hate, because while it simplifies my choices (which is good), it also reveals that most of my choices are made in my own best interest (not so good).

God is more concerned with what’s in your hand now, not what’s potentially in a bush somewhere else, because He knows that the people He can use to bring His kingdom on earth are the ones courageous enough to release their grip in the present, not the future. God calls us to live what we know (Philippians 3:16) while we wait on Him to teach us more, and when I think of it like that, the question really does point to a doable answer. I can give what I have and do what I know while I trust Him with what I don’t.

Who knows where this journey ends? Hopefully with a world led out of slavery by a handful of believers who are brave enough to answer the question of the Almighty by opening their hands and giving what they find there. In fact, if we give Him the one bird in our hand, it is entirely possible that He’ll help us use both empty hands to grab the two that are still in the bush.

Then, we’d have the joy of giving away even more.

Mark 1:41
Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched him. “I am willing,” He told him. “Be made clean.” (HCSB)

It’s funny how convergent life seems at times. What appear on the surface to be random events – a conversation spoken here, a book read there, a song heard during a playlist on iTunes – often, upon deeper investigation, have similar themes and are more connected than we may have at first realized. The B99 and I are experiencing one of those moments right now, as the book she is reading and the book I am reading are eerily similar to one another, and even more striking, they both run parallel to the 30-day study I’m doing in Scripture. I’m not the most discerning guy, but it seems that God may be saying something, and that has prompted what you are now reading.

The titles of the books aren’t important (and they’ll each be written about later anyway as a part of my “Book a Week” challenge), but the statistics and stories contained in both have been more than compelling. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the B99 and I have both been moved by what we’ve read, and I’m sure you would be, too. It’s not hard to be affected when you read things like 3 million women and 1 million children are trafficked sexually a year, or that the United States spends more money on beauty products than education. In light of the fact that half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, what does this statement do to you:

Every Sunday we gather in multimillion-dollar buildings with millions of dollars in vehicles parked outside. We leave worship to spend thousands of dollars on lunch before returning to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of homes. (Radical, p. 115)

See? It isn’t hard to be moved. You don’t really even have to do anything. Sometimes you can be moved simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as anyone who has been in an accident can tell you. If I walk clumsily toward you and bump you, you’ve been moved even if you didn’t want to be. It requires absolutely no desire to be moved. Being moved happens to you, and is often just about a change in position. Moving, on the other hand, is about a change in priorities.

Being moved by compassion makes us people of emotion. Moving with compassion makes us people of action. A lot of us are moved by a lot of things: a sad movie, a picture of a starving boy with a swollen belly, a passionate sermon by a charismatic preacher. The question is, are we moving as the result of any of it? Moving requires effort, thought, passion, purpose. It is what we do as a result of what has been done. Jesus was moved with compassion, and as a result He reached out His hand. Most of us, when we’re moved with compassion, sit in the dimply lit sanctuary and wring our hands.

The B99 and I are growing increasingly aware of our propensity to be moved without ever really moving, and while it’s good to be moved instead of sitting cold-heartedly in a world of pain, at the end of the day it feels hollow if we haven’t followed it up with moving, with reaching, and with touching those in need.

Admittedly, I don’t know what it all looks like in the end, but I know that I am ready to do what I can, where I can, for whom I can. I am ready to move.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from running in races, it’s that seeing the finish line is not the same as being finished. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, because once the finish line is seen, the mind begins to play any number of tricks on the runner, and it often has everything to do with how far away the end is when you first see it. Let me explain…

If I’m at the end of a marathon and my body is totally spent, turning a corner and seeing the finish line 50 feet away makes me run faster immediately because I can see that I’m almost there. But if I round that same corner and see the finish line at the end of another half mile or so of running, my mind will tell me to slow down. Crazy, isn’t it? Seeing the end can sometimes be the last temptation to let up, power down, or mail it in. “What good’s it gonna do you to kill yourself now? It’s still so far away and you are so tired, and you can just walk the rest of the way anyway.”

I have never walked across a finish line, but I have been tempted many times to walk in sight of it, and that fact alone makes me respect the man that Abraham was. After a weary journey, he looked up and saw the goal “in the distance” and he finished his journey well. He didn’t blink, hesitate, consider, or wonder. He just kept walking until he finally arrived at “the place.”

What about us? Many of us have been on long journeys. We have big dreams, and have seen incredible visions of what God has planned in our lives. For me and my family, we know He has great plans for the area in which we live, and have been “all in” on the journey toward “the place” for a number of years. We have friends who are walking with us, and I believe that 2011 will be the year that we suddenly, on the third day, look up and see the place in the distance.

And when we do – when we see the finish line still a bit farther ahead of us than we really want to go – I pray that we steel our minds and spirits and run faithfully towards it. Like a marathoner who has given it all, I am believing for the Lord to give us a burst of faith and belief that will carry us to “the place” where His will is accomplished in our willing sacrifice.

Oh, what a place of rejoicing that will be!