Surrender Your Staff

By Georges Boujakly

February 2006

Symbols are everywhere. When the documentary titled Yugoslavia: The Death of a Nation aired a few years ago, you couldn’t help but notice the icons or symbols of saint and of Christ on display. Calmly, atrocities were defended; genocide justified, but not once was Christianity mentioned. No one could mistake the message!

Zoom to now. When Saddam Hussein sits in court day after day, calmly reading his Koran, with the memory of millions of broken lives still hovering over the courtroom, no one could miss the message.

Symbols are powerful displays of messages. The Bible is not short on images. Take the shepherd’s staff, for example, in Exodus 4:1-5. “Hey, Moses, what’s that in your hand?” “A staff,” he answers. “Lay it down, Surrender it.” Moses does. He then is told to pick it up and he does as trillions of dead molecules of wood turned into trillions of molecules of life in the form of a snake.  This incident came at the tail end of a bunch of well-crafted excuses to avoid surrender by Moses to God’s will for him and his people. Excuses like: wrong number, God; God, let’s discuss this now; God, but what if; woe is me! God; How about him, God? Ever heard or used those?

The staff here is the symbol of surrender of self and the power of God in the surrendered self. “The staff,” says Douglas D. Webster, in The Discipline of Surrender, p. 32, ‘was an all-purpose tool. It was a crutch, a weapon, an extension of one’s reach and a means of rescue all rolled into one indispensable instrument.” From this encounter with God on, Moses’ staff became the icon of power: By it, God brought gnats, grasshoppers, frogs, and turned rivers into blood. By it, seas were divided, rocks gave water, and battles were won (See Exodus 17).

Three ideas from this symbol are buzzing in my head from Webster’s.

1. The staff represents power. In the hands of one who is surrendered, a staff, the symbol of the shepherd, releases God’s will into God’s kingdom and blesses his children. It’s something like prayer!
2. The staff represents a traveler’s tool. An image of life is a journey. One on the journey with God into the “city whose maker is God” surrenders the shaping of his heart. We travel with the authority given to the children of God given by the Good Shepherd. Ordinary encounters, mundane work, routine schedules will take on spiritual vitality in the surrender of our tools for God’s use.
3. The staff represents dependence. A reminder of God’s power and strength to do in us what we cannot do in our own strength (see Zech 4:6).

Jesus was given a staff on his day of surrender (he may have made a few of those as a carpenter). Soldiers mockingly place it in this hand, and a crown on his head, and rudely jeered: Hail… Little did they know that one day the surrendered one will rule the nations with an iron scepter (Mt. 27:28-30, Ps. 2:7).

Christian leader, pastor, and Christian, hear my words. You are shepherds (staff!) of God’s people. You may either use your role in surrender or in pride. In pride, this all-purpose tool of God’s work will be your crutch or excuse to lord it over others, or to fight them. On the other hand, you can extend your staff to reach them in love, surrender, and service to rescue their souls. In pride you will soil your feet in sheep dung, in surrender God beautifies them with good news. As you Walk with the Master, surrender your staff. Nothing but power, authority and dependence can come of it.

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