When the Lord has said to us, 'Is thine heart right, as My heart is with thy heart?' the next word seems to be, 'If it be, give Me thine hand.' What a call to confidence, and love, and free, loyal, happy service is this! and how different will the result of its acceptance be from the old lamentation: 'We labour and have no rest; we have given the hand to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians.' In the service of these 'other lords,' under whatever shape they have presented themselves, we shall have known something of the meaning of having 'both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.' How many a thing have we 'taken in hand,' as we say, which we expected to find an agreeable task, an interest in life, a something towards filling up that unconfessed 'aching void' which is often most real when least acknowledged; and after a while we have found it change under our hands into irksome travail, involving perpetual vexation of spirit! The thing may have been of the earth and for the world, and then no wonder it failed to satisfy even the instinct of work, which comes natural to many of us. Or it may have been right enough in itself, something for the good of others so far as we understood their good, and unselfish in all but unravelled motive, and yet we found it full of tangled vexations, because the hands that held it were not simply consecrated to God. Well, if so, let us bring these soiled and tangle-making hands to the Lord, 'Let us lift up our heart with our hands' to Him, asking Him to clear and cleanse them. If He says, 'What is that in thine hand?' let us examine honestly whether it is something which He can use for His glory or not. If not, do not let us hesitate an instant about dropping it. It may be something we do not like to part with; but the Lord is able to give thee much more than this, and the first glimpse of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus your Lord will enable us to count those things loss which were gain to us. But if it is something which He can use, He will make us do ever so much more with it than before. Moses little thought what the Lord was going to make him do with that 'rod in his hand'! The first thing he had to do with it was to 'cast it on the ground,' and see it pass through a startling change. After this he was commanded to take it up again, hard and terrifying as it was to do so. But when it became again a rod in his hand, it was no longer what it was before, the simple rod of a wandering desert shepherd. Henceforth it was 'the rod of God in his hand' (Ex. iv. 20), wherewith he should do signs, and by which God Himself would do 'marvellous things' (Ps. lxxviii. 12).