I’ve been doing an arm workout that involves holding them out at shoulder height for four hours. Not really. It only feels like four hours because of the burning in my shoulders after the first ninety seconds. It’s only seven minutes total, and they’re the longest seven minutes of my entire day. I have yet to get through it without dropping my arms a few times. Please don’t look at them to see how faithfully I do this workout.
It does make me think a lot about Exodus 17 where Moses told Joshua to go fight the Amalekites while he (Moses) stood on top of a hill holding his staff. As long as he held up the staff, the Israelite army was winning, but when he dropped his hands, the Amalekites overtook them. Verse 12 says “Moses’s arms soon became so tired he could no longer hold them up.” So Aaron and Hur sat him on a rock and held his arms up for him. I want to know how long “soon” kicked in. It was a life and death battle, so I’m assuming he could hold up his arms up longer than I can during my pitiful workout, but also, Moses was an old man when this occurred. He had also just climbed to the top of a big hill, and I don’t know how heavy that staff was.
I can’t hold my arms out at shoulder height for even seven minutes. I’m pretty sure though if I had friends on either side of me holding them up, I could do it indefinitely. Okay, maybe it depends on which two friends. Some of y’all would have us laughing so hard that we’d all collapse right away. But I think most of us could beat seven minutes.
We need people who buoy us up. Life gets so hard and discouraging, but we can keep at it and survive those times when we surround ourselves with individuals who care about and uplift us. Remember too when you encounter people who seem defeated and worn out by all the things, you have no idea how long they’ve been holding up their arms in battle by themselves. Be like Aaron and Hur. Be the strength someone else needs and be willing to allow friends to uphold you in your own time of need. Oh, and if you can hold your arms out at shoulder height on your own longer than seven minutes, I don’t want to know about it.