In my sermon for last week I admitted that in my life I have really only kept 2 of the 10 commandments. I'm safe on the murder and adultery ones, but the rest, well, I've been less than pure. I listed some of my sins; stealing penny candy, bearing false witness against my sister, and coveting my neighbor's i-phone, but I forgot the most important one.
I create false idols.
As I read the Exodus lesson for this Sunday, that great story of Aaron caving under pressure from the masses and helping them create the golden calf, it hit me, I didn't admit my propensity to bow down to other gods.
Read the history of this blog and you'll see that my number one other god is my to-do list. In the last few years, however, I have found that money, or perhaps the lack there of, has become a god clamoring for my attention. Why I can't trust the one true God on issues related to money is still beyond me. I mean I see his hand at work, but I quickly forget to worship him and not my monthly mortgage bill or credit card statement.
When we moved here, thanks to Alabama's stellar hygiene laws, SHW was unable to work for 9 months. We bought a house and furnishing for said house, on the assumption that she would be off work for, oh, 9 days maybe. So we carried a lot of credit card debt around for quite a while. Until we decided to bit the bullet and cash in her little nest-egg to give us some breathing room. Today, we are essentially consumer debt free! If we had not done that, we would not be, and the nest-egg wouldn't be enough to pay the transaction fees to free it from Wall Street.
I can thank God for his work there, and yet, knowing that we will soon face another extended period of time when SHW will not be working, I can feel the golden calf coming again.
I can't imagine I'm the only one with a weakness for golden hamburgers. I can't imagine that I'm the only one who sees it, and tries hard to trust the LORD instead, but falls short. Thanks be to God for his grace, the grace that caused the Lord to change his mind about destroying his people in the golden calf story.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." Prov 3.5-6
1 comment:
I read one commentary (though I cannot remember where) that was quite nice to Aaron. It talked about how he probably did not want to make a false idol and so asked people for their precious jewels...assuming they would say "no way, dude" but when they did not he was stuck. I don't buy it as he really seems quite active in that part of the passage, but it was a nice twist to contemplate.
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