Slow of Speech

“And Moses said unto Jehovah, Oh, Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.” — Exodus 4:10 (ASV)

David grew up knowing the gospel. His parents taught it to him, and he could explain the doctrines as well as any boy in Blantyre. But in his late teens, he wrote, he began to feel for the first time his own need of what Christ had done on the cross, and to take it personally. There was no dramatic night and no famous preacher. A truth he already believed became his own.

Something had held him back. His father’s church seemed suspicious of science, and David loved rocks and stars. He thought he might have to choose between his Bible and his questions. Then he read a book by Thomas Dick, a Scottish minister and amateur astronomer, who argued that the universe is God’s handiwork and studying it is a kind of worship. The wall David had imagined wasn’t there. He could love both, because they had the same Maker.

He described the change with a picture from medicine. It was as if someone colour-blind were suddenly cured. Nothing new appeared, but the whole world looked different. The doctrines had colour now. So did creation. And so did other people’s needs. Soon, he wrote, he resolved to give his life to relieving human misery.

An appeal from a missionary in China asked for doctors, and David decided to become one. In 1836, at twenty-three, he began studying medicine and chemistry in Glasgow, paying his own fees, living in a cheap room and walking the eight miles home at weekends. In summer he went back to the mill to earn the next winter’s money. He wasn’t brilliant. He just kept working after everyone else had stopped.

He applied to the London Missionary Society. He liked that it sent out, in its own words, no particular church system, only the gospel of Christ. He didn’t want to export a Scottish denomination. He wanted to preach Christ.

In 1838 the Society sent him to Chipping Ongar, in Essex, to train under a minister named Richard Cecil. He nearly failed. He was shy and awkward, his accent was thick, and his public prayers were halting. Cecil reported that he was sensible and good-tempered but heavy in manner, and asked for his probation to be extended.

His first biographer told a story from those who knew him at Ongar. Sent to preach in a village chapel, David learned his sermon by heart, climbed into the pulpit, read out his text, and found his mind completely empty. After a painful silence, he told the people he had forgotten everything he meant to say, came down, and left the chapel.

Another student remembered something else, though only at second hand. Walking back from London one night, David found a woman who had been thrown from a carriage. He carried her to a house and made sure she was cared for, then got lost and reached Ongar at dawn, worn out. He couldn’t preach the Good Samaritan from memory. He could be one on a dark country road.

In 1839 the Society accepted him. He never became a good preacher. Years later, famous, he read his speeches badly and hated giving them.

Moses told God he couldn’t speak. God didn’t make him eloquent. He said, “Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth.” Livingstone was never made eloquent either. God needed him to walk, to write and to tell the world what he had seen, and he was given gifts for that.

Maybe there is one thing you are bad at that everyone else seems to find easy: speaking up, reading aloud, making friends. It doesn’t disqualify you. God may have given you something else to do.

One thing to do this week: write down one weakness you think makes you useless to God. Next to it, write one thing you can do. Then do that thing for someone this week.