Life on the Pasture

Have you ever read through a section of the Scriptures that you’ve probably read or heard dozens of times and suddenly had a totally different perspective? That happened to me this morning as I was walking from home to church and listening to my daily reading. Here are the verses that made me stop and think: Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work. They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. So all the skilled workers who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left what they were doing and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the Lord commanded to be done.” Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: “No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.” And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work. (Exodus 36:2–7, NIV)

As I was listening to those verses, I was thinking, “God gives different gifts and abilities to use for His purposes. I get that. And as for the generosity of the people, both the congregations I have had the privilege of serving are like that.” But then the insight came, almost as if the voice of one of my former teachers spoke the words, “Keep in mind the context. Remember where the people were when this was happening.” They were by Mt. Sinai, in the midst of a journey from Egypt to the Promised Land that took them through a wilderness in which they were surrounded by enemies. And yet it was a priority to have the Lord in their midst and construct the tabernacle where the Lord promised to meet with His people as they worshiped Him.

Unfortunately, as the journey continued, the desire for the Lord’s presence in their midst waned and the original generation of adults never entered the Promised Land. Fear overtook trust in the Lord and distorted their memories of Egypt. They spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” (Numbers 21:5, NIV)

We are, in a sense, in the midst of a journey through the wilderness of life, headed to the Promised Land. Along the way, there are our own Mt. Sinai stopping points at which the Lord calls us to have Him at the center, rededicating our God-given abilities and gifts to Him for the purposes for which He gave them to us to begin with. We are surrounded by various enemies that would lead us into fear and worry and distort our memories of the faithfulness of our God. Yet He would remain in our midst, patient with our failures, calling us to true worship through which we, to use the words of St. Paul, “offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” (Romans 12:1, NIV)

– Pastor Schmidt