forgive me

That God is holy ... that he is "other" than us is something that we can easily lose sight of ...

This morning during my Bible study I was reminded of this as I read through Exodus 28-38. In this passage God is giving Moses instruction on how to build the Tabernacle, I was reminded of the detail ... of how special this place that would be his dwelling place needed to be ... in a few places God even makes the point that what is being used there before him, needed to be reserved for Him and only him ... In Exodus 30:36-37 he talks of the incense in this way:

36 You shall beat some of it very small, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you. It shall be most holy for you. 37 And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord.

As I read through the instructions that Moses was given, I was blown away by the holiness of God ... there is none like him ... and we can't treat him, come before him, live our lives for him as for anyone else ... he's got his terms ... it's not about what want or think God would like ... He is God...

But even while Moses has gone up the mountain to be with the Lord -and all the Israelites saw it happen ... it was a very "trembling" experience (Exodus 19:16) ... what we find in Exodus 32 is that they are already looking for something else to worship and they create this idol (a golden calf) to worship... AMAZING!

As I read it, I can become critical of the Israelites, but if I think about it, I'm not much different than them at times. Some times we have this tendency to want to create these little "gods" that we're comfortable with in our lives, in contrast to the God that won't let us settle in our comfortable ways ... we go after the things that have no power, rather than the One who has all power ... we go after the things that we create, rather than the one who was never created...

And we do this even when we have seen God do the most amazing of things in our lives and the lives of those around us ... God forgive us ... GOD FORGIVE ME...