Never Forsaken: It's Too Much for One Person

Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Exodus 18:17-18

 Have you ever gotten yourself so into your routine that you don’t even notice it anymore. You piled on one more thing and one more thing and before you know it your “simple” 17 step system is bogging you down far more than you realized. Perhaps it came from an, “I gotta do it” mentality. You come across a responsibility and feel like it’s yours, so you add it on. They even make sense in your mind. You gotta take a shower. You gotta fix breakfast. You gotta do the dishes and the laundry and clean the kitchen and the bathroom and balance the checkbook and pay the bills. You gotta lead the Bible study and serve as a greeter at church on Sunday and help out with the Women’s Tea and lead the kids’ class on Wednesday night. Before too long, these gottas will drown you! But, what are you to do? You gotta!

 Sadly, I’ve been at this point more times in my life than I have any right to. You think I’d learn, but that “Pull yourself up by your boot straps” mentality is so strong in me that it sneaks in and pushes me to power through when the wiser part of me is waving frantically in the background trying to remind me that I don’t have to do it all today, and I don’t have to do it all alone. I’ve written about it several times in the past (like here and here), but that doesn’t mean I’ve learned my lesson and I make better choices all the time. Just last week I fell into a “gotta” day and totally overdid myself leading to days of painful recovery and limited ability. But I can take a little comfort in knowing that someone who was led as clearly and directly by God as Moses fell into this same trap, and that he, too, needed to learn to let go of responsibility and find his limits.

After all that had happened in Egypt and afterwards, Moses had come to a place in Israelite society where he was the ultimate authority. Need something? Ask Moses. Have a problem? Ask Moses. That must have been kind of cool for him, at first. This people, his people, who had rejected him originally when he had set out to stand up for them as a young man, was looking to him now as a leader, as THE leader. But, before long, it must have been overwhelming. There were more than a million people in their group and, with them, far more than a million problems. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got enough trying to deal with my own, and I’m sure Moses did too. People started coming to him with their troubles and he felt both honored and beholden to help them out. Who should assume the cost for this dead cow? My daughter is pregnant, and this man needs to take responsibility! Their tent is too close to my tent and they snore at night. Some problems were difficult, and others clear-cut, but the sheer volume of them was enough to drown any person.

 Maybe God tried to get Moses’ attention about this early on, but he just didn’t get it. Maybe there were lots of clues along the way, and maybe Moses even had gotten to the point where he recognized it was all too much, but he felt like he had to. After all, if he didn’t do it, who would? Maybe, the burdens of caring for the people had pushed their way in between Moses and his relationship with God, and his judgements were getting less and less in line with what God wanted for the people – or if it hadn’t happened yet, perhaps it wasn’t far off. That’s a lot of maybes, but I think you can see what I’m saying. I know when I look back, I can often see markers where I was given an opportunity to choose differently, and I didn’t. Thankfully, God didn’t give up on Moses at those points, and He hasn’t given up on me either. God knew exactly what it would take to get Moses’ attention in the midst of all this bother and burden – his father-in-law and his family.

 We don’t know at what point or for what reason Moses sent his wife and children back with her father, but he had. And now, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, felt that it was time to reunite them. God’s prompting? That would be my guess. And Jethro was just the man that Moses would listen to in this scenario, who had the experience and wisdom to give him the advice he so desperately needed to hear, “Get help! You don’t have to do this all by yourself!” It seemed obvious to Jethro but clearly Moses hadn’t considered it at all. Thankfully, though, Moses listened to Jethro and set up a clear judicial system for the people that would meet all their needs, theirs and Moses’. And, I’d like to hope, that Zipporah and his sons would also help bring a balance and joy to Moses’ life that was so needed.

Here’s the Thing: What does it take to get you to listen? Is there a person whose voice cuts through the “gottas” straight to your heart? Do you have to crash, burn and hit bottom before you can recognize your need for help? Let me share with you the voice of experience, the faster you listen, the better off you’ll be!