January 26 - Who am I?

Exodus 2:11-3:22

Matthew 17:10-27

Psalm 22:1-18

Proverbs 5:7-14

Moses asked that question of God - "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"  I ask the same question of myself. Who am I?

I am a stockbroker, and my clients are investors - analysts, who study companies to see if they are good investments, and portfolio managers who ultimately decide which of the stocks the analysts think are good investments are actually bought.  Their job is to pick winners - stocks that will do better than all the others.

There are many winners, but the biggest stock winners are those an investor sees and recognizes well before anyone else does.  A good stock picker, for example, would have recognized Apple was a good investment in January 2009.  He would've bought the stock at $78.20, and watched it rise 9fold, to over $700.  Even today, after it had fallen so much, to $439.88, he still would have done well.  The investor that got in late, after others had recognized the opportunity, who had bought at, say, $600?  Not so good.

In this context, I marvel at how consistently God recognizes winners where I would only see losers.  Moses was a killer dumb enough to throw away a life of protected comfort!  Peter was a seemingly inept fisherman - the only time he seems to have caught anything was when a Carpenter told him what to do - and an uneducated man who presumed to speak for the Master in the matter of the temple tax.  The stories go on and on - Matthew was a tax collector, David a murderer, Saul a persecutor of Christians.  Yet God was able to find them during their respective January 2009s and turn them into instruments of His salvation - for the enslaved Hebrews, and for the whole world.

I think Moses was right to ask "Who am I?". I mean, who am into be husband and father to a wonderful woman and three great children?  Who am I to think i can credibly give investment advice to anyone? 

The answer to that question, I believe, is I am - correction, we all are - winners God has chosen as part of His plan.  God had already chosen Moses before He was born; He didn't choose Moses without knowing what was to come - the murder, the unwillingness to serve without his brother, the doubt that would lead him to strike the rock twice.  He didn't choose Peter without knowing Peter would deny Him three times, and would be carried off against his will.  No, He chose them because, in the context of His plan, they were the winners.  And, as they submitted to His will, they were.

So we have all been chosen - to be husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, sister, brother, friend, colleague...by a God, in Whose plan, we are destined to be winners according to His definition, however complete our shortcomings and imperfections might be.  The only way that does not happen is if we choose not to submit to His will.

So when the burden of our imperfection, of the daily struggle we fight takes its toll on us, perhaps it might help to think of today as our own January 2009, remember God has chosen us, God loves us - we are just winners waiting to realize we are worth far more than $78.20 per share.