It is only a hammer, but for me it is very significant because it reminds me of a time when I was entrusted with a huge responsibility.
My Father had become very unwell and was unable to run our farm for a few months. It was a busy time of the year and I was entrusted with managing the farm. I was only 18 years old.
There were fences to be built and repaired and I needed a new hammer so I went and bought a top quality Estwing hammer.
Now whenever I pick up that hammer I think of my Dad and how he believed in me. I suppose in some ways it was a coming of age type of thing. An entry into manhood from being a child. He believed in me and had faith in me that I would manage his farm well while he recovered.
Have you ever been thrown a challenge that takes you
out of your comfort zone?[pullquote]A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls. Larry Crabb[/pullquote]
Someone believes in you, sees your potential, throws you a quest that takes your breathe away. You are given a ring to carry to Mordor but you are only a little Hobbit.
Recently I have been working at a school as part of my Gumboot Gardening business (checkout some photos on my facebook page).
The first job was to build a compost bin and so I enlisted some of the children. As I gave them my special hammer I could see some of them wonder if they could hit that nail. As they did the others cheered them on and belief and confidence grew within themselves.
What would it be like to have a belief in someone, express that confidence and then see them doubt and dispute it. You extend a hand, express an invitation, yet fear washes over their face and they withdraw into their shell of self protective push backs.
You wonder what it will take to see them come out of their cave of complacency. More encouragement? Perhaps another invitation? Perhaps a commitment to walk alongside them as they face the fear.
The prophet Jeremiah was such a person. He records his invitation from God here.
“Before I shaped you in the womb,
I knew all about you.
Before you saw the light of day,
I had holy plans for you:
A prophet to the nations—
that’s what I had in mind for you.”
But I said, “Hold it, Master God! Look at me.
I don’t know anything. I’m only a boy!”
God told me, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only a boy.’
I’ll tell you where to go and you’ll go there.
I’ll tell you what to say and you’ll say it.
Don’t be afraid of a soul.
I’ll be right there, looking after you.”
God’s Decree. Jeremiah 1:4-8 (The Message)
I may be reading too much into the text but I sense Gods disappointment, hurt, and possibly mild anger at Jeremiahs response. Do you sense this too?
God knows Jeremiah inside out, back to front, freckles and pimples. He knows Jeremiah intimately like no one else. God knows the fears and misgivings Jeremiah will and does have about the plan. So he confirms his commitment to Jeremiah with a connection to his heart.
He promises that Jeremiah will not go it alone.
- I’ll tell you where to go
- I’ll tell you what to say
- I’ll be right there, looking after you
Jeremiah, like all of us, had the
‘I’m only a …’
thinking pattern.
For him it was ‘I’m only a boy’ but for many of us we also have a self talk that I believe disappoints the heart of God
- ‘I’m only a girl’
- ‘I’m only a housewife’
- ‘I’m only a rubbish collector’
- ‘I’m only a teacher’
- ‘I’m only a kitchen hand’
- ‘I’m only a …. (fill in your own little verse)’
I am tired of hearing discounting sentences come out of the mouths of God’s beautiful creation.
I will always be held back in my turtle shell of ‘I am only a …’ while I believe that it is only ‘I’ that is involved.
When I have chosen to believe that its all up to me then truly I am only a …
The promise from this passage is that God is with you. God loves you too much to leave you the way you are, stuck inside you turtle shell of ‘I’m only’
Do you discount God and what God could do in you?
God saw some thing very special in young Jeremiah and he sees something as equally awesome in you.
Some final words from Eugene Peterson
There is an enormous gap between what we think we can do and what God calls us to do. Our ideas of what we can do or want to do are trivial; God’s ideas for us are grand. God’s call to Jeremiah to be a prophet parallels his call to us to be a person. The excuses we make are plausible; often they are statements of fact, but they are excuses all the same and are disallowed by our Lord who says: ‘Do not say, I am only a youth’ Eugene Peterson Run with the Horses
Question to Consider and leave a comment.
- Why do we discount ourselves?
- Do you think it disappoints God with our ‘I’m only a …’ responses?
Barry Pearman
