Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” – Exodus 32:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (June 20, 2012): Exodus 32

Where did you get your stuff? I think of all of the questions that we might ask ourselves; this might be one of the trickier ones. I mean, the answer really seems to be so simple. For most of us the things that we have are the products of our work and the effort we have expended in life. So it is easy to think that the things that we possess, our stuff, came from us. But the Bible would argue that because God has given us all of our abilities that really all of our stuff belongs to God. We are just stewards or caretakers of the things that he has given to us.

Maybe in the Exodus story, that fact is a little more obvious. One of the questions that you have to wonder about is where did the Israelite slaves get the gold and silver jewelry? That is, until we remember that earlier in the story God made the Egyptians receptive to Israel, and that they gave the people of Israel some of their jewelry. The gold and silver that the people were now willing sacrifice for the making of a new God had not been originally theirs. God had miraculously given the jewelry to them. And maybe that made the making of the idol even more sinful. Israel was about to take what had been given to them by God, to create something that would replace God.

Maybe that is exactly what we do with the things that we own. It seems so easy for the blessings that have come to us from the hands of God, to become the idols that threaten to tear us away from God. It is so easy to serve money instead of God, ironically the same money that God gave to us in the first the place.

Tomorrow’s scripture Reading: Exodus 33