I love Ikea furniture. I could spend the entire day walking through Ikea, not to mention eating at their cafe and partaking in a cinnamon bun from their food stand on the way out the door. I stroll through the showroom looking for the perfect item to fill that corner or hold my books as my son, Gabriel, searches for the kid's play stations. To him, these beautiful multicolored kiosks of delight, look like rocket ships representing brief moments of joy that break up the hours of boredom caused by his father's addiction. My pattern always takes me to the used section of discounted floor models, hastily put together late at night by exhausted staff members who hate the very process I have come to love... Putting together Ikea furniture. There, I'm looking for the best deal or maybe just a few parts I can fashion into a new something or other. Once finished, I load in boxes into, or onto, the family Ford Freestyle (a minivan for those of us in denial about minivans and want to still claim to drive an SUV) and drive home for my favorite part... some assembly required.My problem is this, I pride myself on completing my project without the use of instructions. I sit down to my task with tools in hand, usually power tools which for Ikea furniture is total overkill but makes me feel manly, and begin putting tab "a" into slot "b". With the simple projects, I am usually fine, but I remember one evening having to take apart and rebuild my new bookcase because I had put it together backwards the first time.
If you think I have a problem following directions, wait until you read the history of Israel. Exodus 20-31 represents the first major set of instructions God gave to the his people. The Hebrew word for the first five books of the bible is Torah which, though it can be translated as Law, it can more rightly be read as "instruction" as God was instructing them on life. Here you have the usual commands life; “pierce a hole in the ear of a slave who loves you and wants to stay with you” along with the not so usual, “place the blood of the sacrifice on the right ear, thumb and big toe of the priest.” Okay, so maybe most of them seem unusual to us.
In this section there are 4 chapters devoted to instructions about life in general and 6 chapters about how the people are to worship God. Why is this? God wants his people to undertand that he is the most important person for them to follow. In the tabernacle God is bringing the throne room of heaven down to earth so that the people know that he is with them. It has to be special, it has to be sacred, or the people would quickly turn to other objects of worship. How can we make worshiping God more sacred in our lives? Committing to worship daily, weekly, hours of prayer, moments of solitude... these are all ways to remember that God is sacred.
On another track, there are 613 laws in the Old Testament. Many of these laws develop and repeat through Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, narrowing the number down a bit. When you begin to read these laws in detail, you will notice that each of them can be drawn back to the 10 commandments in some way. For instance, there is a law that you must put a railing around your roof to prevent someone from falling off... or to prevent you from accidentally violating the 5th commandment and killing someone. Essentially we are reading case law, how the ten play out in the biblical culture. Memorizing 10 is a lot more appealing than 613, don't you think? Jesus takes a step further in giving us what has come to be called the Great Commandment (Mark 12:28-34, Luke 10:25-28, Matt 7:12, 19:19, & 22:34-40), where he boils the 10 down to 2. Each of these teach in one form or another that we are to Love God, and Love our Neighbor. Now that is much simpler... I might even remember those.
What if, in any given situation we could pause and ask. How am loving God in this situation? How am I loving my neighbor? What if remembering God's holiness is simply living out of those two questions?
May God bless us with the ability to follow his instruction... simply loving him, and loving our neighbors today.
In Jesus' Name,
Amen
