Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. The LORD said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”
So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.
But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I have given them.” -- Numbers 20:6-12
Just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets. (The Brigadier – “Dr. Who”)
Or, in terms of Gagdad Bob’s ongoing ruminations on Balthasar, could we cut the drama? Why can’t we just, once in a while, address an issue with human power and employ our own efforts to get things done? It seems so much simpler, or at least more straightforward. You know, like instead of wandering around out here in the desert getting water from rocks and eating whatever this manna stuff is, we go in and kill off some tribe that has a river and some land.
It’s not so much that we want to do away with the drama as we’d like to use our own script, be the director, or at least ad lib a little. That’s all Moses was doing. The Bible, though, is all about types and shadows, depicting the universal in little vignettes that we can view and comprehend.
Moses wanted freedom and justice for his people. When he attempted to bring justice, he got forty years of exile in the desert. When he tried to give them freedom, he got – well, forty more years of wandering in the wilderness. Out of all the man endured, this single flash of anger in a moment of frustration denied him entry into the land of Canaan and the opportunity to see his people settled and established in covenant with God.
Moses is not innocent in this. He took matters into his own hand, something Scripture cautions against repeatedly. He knew what God had told him. He could not plead ignorance, though he did not necessarily understand the significance of what he was to depict.
What does it mean to get a spring of water from a rock? Water is Spirit and life. The rock is God. If we speak to the Rock – that is, pray, relying on the grace of God, the life of God flows out to and through us by His Spirit. When Moses struck the rock with the symbol of his authority, his staff, he corrupted the story. Instead of depicting a trust in God’s grace, he depicts God in slave-like subservience to human demands, to man’s strength and authority. Though the Lord loved Moses and understood his weariness and frustration, He could not endorse his actions and reinforce the spoiled object lesson.
We may err in different ways with the same result. I am nobody; no one will know; it doesn't matter if I do things my way. Another view is the sort of new-agey way: I am as a god; I can do as I will and have my way. Or, as Moses did: I know God wants this done; I am going to do it, and since I am "doing the Lord's work", it doesn't matter if I do it my way.
What I am ever-so-slowly coming to understand is that this is replayed in my own life. Obedience in small things takes on a new importance since my actions are channels for big truth to enter into the small, otherwise insignificant details of my existence. I don’t know if those bits of acting right – rather, I don’t know how those bits of acting right ripple through the fabric of reality. I know they do.
2 comments:
"...my actions are channels for big truth to enter into the small..."
I was always one to want the Big Kill, to wipe out the big problems in a dramatic move -- sort of like your previous avatar, now that I think about it -- and figured the small details would handle themselves.
But at some point in my reading I was pondering the "struggle with evil" -- not Big Evil, but just all the accumulated detritus that de-rails the good we wish to do. And I read the suggestion that, "Single acts of resistance count." I said, "Oh."
Anyway, that idea has helped me over the years, to be willing to deal with small actions, and try to make them as right as possible.
I've even noticed that on projects -- both the ones for work and the ones my wife comes up with. I am more effective, and less likely to procrastinate, if I can break it down and just start on some smaller, manageable part.
I always hated picking rocks off these old fields on the Plateau. It was where I first began to grasp the concept of infinity. You can't get them all at once, it's always one at a time.
Post a Comment