Have you ever felt like you had too large of a mountain of work in front of you? Like the expectations on you were just too much to ever accomplish? Moses was in a similar situation. The leader of over 2 million people, having organized their departure from Egypt, and now responsible for a great crowd of people in a hostile environment away from the only home they had known for over 400 years. He sat from morning to night to judge the needs of the people, to hear their disputes, to teach them God's law, to inquire of God on the difficult issues, to keep everything moving along as it should. To say Moses was in the position of just putting out fires would be an understatement. He was doing very necessary work that had no end in sight. How many times a day did he have to teach "If you steal an ox, you have to give 5 back, if you steal a sheep, you have to give 4 back?"
Fortunately for Moses, and for us, there is more to life than just survival mode. Than just putting out fire after fire in our lives, but it involves a choice. We have to choose to do what needs to be done to make lemonade with this lemon. The upside of lots of work? Lots of progress. And lots of people means lots of workers! Moses got his solution from Jethro, his father-in-law. The solution is "Don't be proud, work with a crowd!"
With responsibility often comes the temptation to pride. It sneaks in slowly and makes us think that we are important because of the work we are doing. It makes us feel that we are the only ones that can do this important work. Sometimes we hold onto tasks because we don't want the feeling of not being needed - I won't teach anyone else how to clean the paper jam out of the copier because I like being the copy machine savior for my coworkers. We don't want to let go of tasks because the tasks make us important. We all have to resist this subtle area of pride in our lives and move on to the second half - work with a crowd.
Jethro suggested choosing men who feared God, who could be trusted, who had integrity and teaching them to answer problems. Rulers over 10, 50, 100 and 1000. I imagine the rulers of ten learned the rule of stealing livestock. I imagine the rulers of 100 learned how to tell what punishment should be given for an ox that has gored (either man or beast). I imagine the rulers over 1000 learned more intricate laws than that. Each had his job to do and the cases they didn't know, or couldn't get to the bottom of they brought to Moses. He always had the option of going to the Lord if he didn't know. Working with a crowd involves trusting trustworthy people to share the load. They have to be trustworthy or we are just neglecting work. We have to trust them, or it just involves us moving arms, legs and mouths of puppets.
Do you have too much work before you? While school kids have to do their own homework, most of us have the option of following Jethro's advice "Don't be proud, work with a crowd!"
If you'd like to hear the sermon that goes along with the blog post - it will be available for the next month or so over at www.niobebaptist.org/media.html Thanks for stopping by!
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