Pro Plus

Isaiah 41:10

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand

Within my time in the choir I've become familiar with the term 'pro-plus'. These are little pills of caffeine which people take when they are flagging (usuallly between rehearsal and evensong) and need a sudden and drastic pick me up. The ingestion is quick, the results spectacular. But the thought of a pill suddenly spiking your energy slightly terrifies me (unfoundedly, of course, they are just chemicals, as the sugar in a banana is a chemical) and my natural aversion to caffeine has kept me off the pro-plus so far.

But this is a slightly circuitous introduction to what I wanted to say. What I wanted to write about today was how God carried me through when I (my nerves, my confidence) was flagging.

On Friday I had to give a speech.

Speeches and I have a strange history. I recall two terrible instances, one where I couldn't pronounce Japan and Japanese when I was giving a presentation on the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (which rather centrally involved the Japanese military), and another time when I was so nervous and my mouth so dry that I kept saying 'facefulness' instead of 'faithfulness'.

But I also remember giving my testimony in church before my baptism, and feeling confident and happy.

So I didn't really know how this speech on Friday would go. I felt a little like Moses, when God tells him to speak in Pharaoh's court. 'Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.' (exodus 4:10)

But then even there God replies to Moses immediately (not in the three day to 2 month periods I sometimes take to reply to people) and says 'I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.'

In the preparation for the speech God gave me wonderful people who sent me encouraging verses, and prayed for me, and lifted me, like Aaron and Hur when 'Moses' hands grew weary[...] [they] held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.' And on the actual speech day I felt more calm than normal before a speech. I practiced in my room, carefully going over the danger spots ('per-fec-tion-is-tic') and making sure I wasn't speaking to fast or too dead-pan (as my choir teacher described my voice when I emcee-ed for a concert, leaving me very confused throughout the whole performance)