Friday, March 2, 2018
“Moses
himself told the people of Israel, ‘God will raise up for you a Prophet like me
from among your own people.’ Moses was
with our ancestors, the assembly of God’s people in the wilderness, when the
angel spoke to him at Mount Sinai. And
there Moses received life-giving words to pass on to us. “But our ancestors refused to listen to
Moses. They rejected him and wanted to
return to Egypt. They told Aaron, ‘Make
us some gods who can lead us, for we don’t know what has become of this Moses,
who brought us out of Egypt.’ Acts 7:37-40(NLT)
This text is part
of Stephen’s speech to the rulers in Jerusalem in defense of why he proclaims
Christ as Messiah. That speech got him
in a lot of hot water, and Stephen became the first martyr of the church. Stephen’s speech merely recounts how God’s
people have always gotten themselves in hot water whenever they decided to walk
by sight, and not by faith. The ruling council
(Sanhedrin) knew Israel’s history, how their ancestors were more than willing
to follow Moses out of Egypt when they carried with them Egypt’s treasure. The Egyptians were afraid to have any more
plagues, so they loaded-down the freed slaves with gold, silver and jewels and
pleaded with them to leave and not come back.
But life in the wilderness carried with it some danger and
uncertainty. The people were uneasy
about where they were headed, and if they’d actually get there before getting
slaughtered by some other nation. When
Moses went up on the mountain to speak with God, and didn’t come back for more
than a month, uneasiness turned to abject fear and unbelief in this God they
could not see. They defaulted back to
making idols to worship and have something tangible to which they could cling
for comfort.
This history of God’s special people, the Jews, also plagues the people of
the New Covenant. In our era fear is no
less a detriment to faith as it was in times of old. We may not wander in the desert wilderness
for forty years eating manna, but we’re no stranger to wandering around in the
bone-drying opulence of materialistic abundance. Somehow, the greater threat is not an absence
of things, but having too much. The
minute we have more, we want much more. John
D. Rockefeller was the world’s richest man in the 19th century; he
was asked by a reporter: How
much money is enough? The
billionaire replied: Just
a little more! Lent is a
season to prepare ye the way of the Lord…to clear the junk
of materialism, bad attitudes and uncleanness from the pathways of our lives,
and make a welcome sign for Jesus over the doors of our hearts.
I have this shed
in my backyard. We used to call it our “barn”
because it is shaped like a barn. It still
looks good…from a distance. But up close
you can see It leans towards the back, and is covered with dust, dirt, and who
knows what else. And those are its
lesser problems you can see from the outside. You have to open both double doors
to get inside. There are yard tools on
the floor, along with assorted leftover scraps from projects, and old parts of
things I can’t identify. On the
workbench, and everywhere you look there are things stuffed in storage bins,
around, and on top of more storage bins.
There are nests of creatures who have decided to live in my barn-turned-junk-shed. There is nothing but chaos everywhere!
Now, the only
solution (besides a bulldozer) is something I dread; I have got to make the
decision, carve-out the time on a vacation week, and empty the junk from my
shed. It will require more than a little
rearranging; this level of junk-affliction demands total clean-out, re-leveling
the floor, bleach and pressure-washing, and an incredible amount of prayer!
For You Today
In case you missed
the sarcasm directed at my lack of care for the barn-shed, I wasn’t talking
about my storage house for yard tools; I was talking about my life (and yours,
perhaps?) and this season of Lent.
You chew on that as you hit the
Rocky Road; have a blessed day.
[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com.
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