While Moses was away with...
Illustration
While Moses was away with God on the mountaintop, the people clamored for gods to worship. So poor, misguided Aaron, melted their earrings and Egyptian booty and made a golden calf, proclaiming to the people a great lie: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt."
Like the wandering Israelites, everything we have, everything we are, everything we hope to be is a gift from God. How it must hurt God when we ascribe to lesser things that ought to be ascribed to God.
What would we melt down to make our golden calves? Would we include our educations, our jobs, our wealth and possessions, our drive and determination, our intellect, our personality, our good looks, our good luck? Would we take all these worldly aspirations and signs of success and fashion them into a golden calf? These are your gods, O Israel, who set you free, who gave you life, who called you into being. They are the best gods money can buy, the best gods intellect can conceive, gods guaranteed to help you keep up with the neighbors and look good while doing it.
And God watches from the mountain-side and weeps.
Like the wandering Israelites, everything we have, everything we are, everything we hope to be is a gift from God. How it must hurt God when we ascribe to lesser things that ought to be ascribed to God.
What would we melt down to make our golden calves? Would we include our educations, our jobs, our wealth and possessions, our drive and determination, our intellect, our personality, our good looks, our good luck? Would we take all these worldly aspirations and signs of success and fashion them into a golden calf? These are your gods, O Israel, who set you free, who gave you life, who called you into being. They are the best gods money can buy, the best gods intellect can conceive, gods guaranteed to help you keep up with the neighbors and look good while doing it.
And God watches from the mountain-side and weeps.
