August 4, 2016 – Devotions based on passages from the book David and Goliath
Outsourcing 

“But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”   Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?    Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.”   But he said, “O my Lord, please send someone else.”   Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “What of your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak fluently; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad.    You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do.   He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him.”  Exodus 4:10-16 

“The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA got its start….founded by Ingvar Kamprad.  His great innovation was to realize that much of the cost of furniture was tied up in its assembly.  So he sold furniture that hadn’t yet been assembled, shipped it cheaply in flat boxes, and undersold all his competitors.  In the mid 1950’s he ran into trouble.  Swedish furniture manufacturers launched a boycott of IKEA.  They were angry at his low prices, and they stopped filling his orders.  IKEA faced ruin.  Desperate for a solution, Kamprad looked south and realized just across the Baltic Sea….was Poland, a country with much cheaper labor and plenty of wood.  That’s Kamprad’s openness: few companies were outsourcing like that in the early 1960’s.  Poland in the 1960’s was a mess.  It was a Communist country.  It had none of the infrastructure or machinery or trained work-force…But Kamprad pulled it off.  What is the most striking fact about Kamprad’s decision?  It’s the year he went to Poland: 1961.  The Berlin Wall was going up.  The Cold War was at its peak.  To be creative (shipping furniture flat and outsourcing in the face of a boycott), and conscientious (to build a first-class manufacturing operation in an economic backwater) and have the strength of mind to defy the Cold War?  That’s rare.”  (David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, p. 117-118) 

Outsourcing is not just the invention of the mid-20th century.  G-d has been outsourcing since the beginning of creation.  Think about it.  When the people were living sinful lives, G-d turned to Noah to build the ark and start anew.  When G-d wanted to free the Israelites, G-d turned to Moses to tell him he was going to be the one to free the people from the oppression of the Egyptians.  Now, Moses was not so keen to the idea.  In fact, Moses comes up with five specific reasons why he should not be the one.  That takes a lot of courage to tell G-d you are not the right person to go and do what G-d asks you to do – especially when G-d is speaking to you from a burning bush.  Anyway, Moses tells G-d, among other things, that he is a nobody, so why would the people listen to him.  And besides, he does not speak well in front of crowds, so wouldn’t it be better to send someone else.  So G-d decides he will outsource the speaking part of the job to, “your brother Aaron the Levite… I know that he can speak fluently…”  And of course the rest is Israelite history.   

G-d continues to need people to help with the work of G-d, so G-d will continue to outsource the work needed to be done.  That is what is at the heart of the phrase “G-d’s Work, Our Hands”.  There is plenty of work needed to be done, and G-d will continually look to us as possible people to be outsourced.  And that’s the way it should be. 

Pastor Dave