Day 14 – Issue 12

Be Still Know

Exodus 32:9 NLT

Then the Lord said, ‘I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are.

As a parent you soon learn that pleasant though silence is, where a toddler is involved it usually means trouble! One afternoon when looking after my daughter, and having left her contentedly playing in her room, I realised that my last hour had not been disturbed once by the normal intrusion of an inquisitive youngster. Time to investigate…A good job, as I was greeted by a face decorated with Mum’s make-up and an endearingly cheeky smile. This, of course, the make-up in which her previous repeated interest had been forbidden with strict instructions that it was off-limits.

The Israelites, rather like my daughter, had been left to their own devices rather too long. Moses was away up Mount Sinai conversing with God while they remained below, pumped up about serving a God who was about to covenant with them. In their enthusiasm, they implored Aaron to create something for them to worship, such was their hunger for God. There is nothing to say that they rejected God, only that they wanted to create some form to which they might direct their worship; an early form of a ‘designer religion’.

It may well be that you want to honour your saviour, yet it may also be that you want to do so in a way that best serves your needs. The whole purpose of gathering to worship is to demonstrate that God is worthy of our veneration, declare the simple truth of our faith as captured in the Apostles’ Creed, draw encouragement and strength from God in the Eucharist, and recommit to live by God’s Rule in a lawless society to which we return.

QUESTION: What is your motivation in approaching God?

PRAYER: Father, help me not to confuse the means by which I worship with the object of my worship – your Son, Jesus Christ.