Heeellloo! Welcome to Day 32. If you're curious if today is going to be another day full of "slaughter this animal and take its meat and fat and kidneys, and blah, blah, blah" you would be correct! But it ends going back to narrative again (kinda) and also introduces an interesting discussion point I'll talk more about below. For now, lets be immersed in God's most wondrous (and sometimes odd) Word. :)
Scripture to Read
Psalm 32 (I think this goes really well with yesterdays thoughts)
Audio Bible
Questions to Consider
What does this teach me about God?
What does this teach me about humanity?
What does this teach me about myself?
Would Jesus say amen to this?
- My Thoughts -
I have two thoughts for this one - the first is about authority. The frequent command we see come up over and over is "they did just as Moses had commanded" or "They did as the Lord had commanded" etc. I wonder if people ever struggled with the chain of command. The US has traditional roots in being anti-authority. This is one of the many things that is both great, but not always so great about our country. We the free states kicked out the rule of the king and our current climate shows that whether you are on the left or the right you do not like being told what you can and cannot do. Let alone what you must do. There is a lot of sacrificing of personal property in the scripture, and a lot of murder of animals. I know if I were in their shoes I would not be able to go through killing an animal for sacrifice. I love animals too much. I know I would eventually get fed up with having to keep giving up perfectly good food for sacrifice. Many similiarities can be drawn about how our concern and willingness to abide with the pandemic since march has ebbed and flowed the longer it has gone on. But maybe there is a lesson in the scriptures about how life just goes more smooth for those that listen to authority figures lest you make a mistake and end up like Nadab and Abihu.
Secondly, they mention at the beginning of chapter 10 that priests must identify what is sacred and what is common. The terms that I learned in seminary for this is sacred and profane and deciding which is which. For example, a piece of cloth in a store is just cloth (profane) but a piece of cloth on a wood box in the middle of a church is suddenly called a parament and is now sacred. A candle is just a source of light in many cases and as such is profane, but a candle burned in a church is sacred. We could go on, but the churches ability to turn things into sacred worth is an important thing to note. The question becomes - do we continue to hold that same principle for all people that walk through the door? If a gay couple came into our door would they be sacred worth? An interracial couple? A homeless man? More than likely, yes, because of our setting. But is God's kingdom restricted to just a sanctuary? Of course not. God's kingdom is everywhere. So we must be cognizant to keep our same principles of sacred worth wherever we are in the world.
What is a sacred object to you? What makes it sacred to you? Is there a family story to go with it? Etc. I would love to know what is holy to you.
Prayer:
God, help me to listen to you today above all other voices. Help me to see signs of your holy spirit at work around me. Help me to view myself as sacred worth and all others I encounter today. Help me to believe in the words of the psalmist who says the Lord prepares a pathway for those who believe in Him. Help me, Lord. Amen.
There are a lot of things I hold near and dear, but Nature is sacred to me. I've been working to have a smaller carbon footprint, the fact that I don't need to drive (I can walk) to one of my jobs is helping me do that.