Theological Commentary: Click Here
Today, I am
going to start with the fifteenth and the eight day of the festival. Hopefully as you read, you picked up on the
differences within the paragraphs that reference these. These days are holy days. These days are days without normal work to be
done. Naturally, being seven days apart,
these days would line up with the idea of Sabbath.
If we step
back from this concept, for a second, we can rationalize it really
quickly. We are very comfortable with
the idea that Sabbath means no normal work.
It fits really well with what we understand of traditional Judaism.
On the other
hand, let’s look at the non-Sabbath days.
These are also days of worship, yet there is no prohibition for normal
work on these days. What does this tell
us? I believe the message is subtle, yet
clear. Worship does not have to be
separate from life. We can worship God
while going about our life. We can
worship God while being in the world.
So often we
like to compartmentalize. We think that
there is worldly life and then there is godly worship. What we see here in this chapter, though, is
different. There is worship while we go
about our worldly business and there is worship while we separate ourselves
from our worldly work. In other words,
we can take God with us wherever we are.
We may not think of worshipping God while we are out and about in the world,
but that is our problem and not God’s problem!
In addition
to this thought, I have some very interesting thoughts in my commentary from
several years back. You can read them if
you want a completely different perspective on this chapter. In that post, I focus on an entirely different
element in these verses, not necessarily contrary thoughts.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment