Today’s Scripture Reading (October 8,
2015): Numbers 27
Our
political system has a tendency to demonize its leaders. What we often remember
about a leader are the bad things, because those are the things that political
opponents have publicized. A good example might be Jimmy Carter. When Carter
left his single term as the President of the United States, most would have
been hard pressed to recognize anything that he had done right. But in the
three plus decades since his time as the President, his approval rating has
steadily improved. While Carter, at one point, could have been found on a list
of the worst Presidents that the United States had ever known, he rarely makes
those lists now. Instead, he is consistently seen as one of the best past
Presidents ever – Carter, maybe better than anyone else, seems to have figured
out how to be an ex-President. His diplomacy has shone and his personality has
made friends out of enemies. And there is a steady realization that all of
these things were there during his single term in office. The problem seems to
have been that, in the wake of the Nixon disaster presidency, we missed what we
maybe should have seen. We were willing to see the devil in Carter and to a
certain extent in Gerald Ford, because we had been convinced that we had seen
the devil in Richard Nixon.
In any
system, the passing on of leadership is an extremely tough moment. It is hard
to know what the next leader might do, and I think it is probably in all of our
natures to not to want to trust the office of leadership with someone else. In
Canada, Stephen Harper hopes that he can continue as leader of the nation. For
Barak Obama and American term limits, that is simply not the case. But a leader
cannot stop leading just because his time in office is growing short, there are
many long term investments that the leader has to entrust to someone else as
his time draws to a close.
And Moses
time is doing just that. He knows that he will not be the leader in the next
stage of Israel’s journey, that job will be passed on to someone else. Moses
has questions. Will the next leader be able to do finish all that Moses had
started? Or is all that has happened to Israel a story that has no happy
ending? Moses probably better than anyone knows how hard a job leadership over
this group of people will be. He has seen the anguish and the sorrow that they
have caused him. And yet he knows that they need a leader.
So Moses
prays that the God of this life would place a leader over top of the nation –
one who will be able to “bring them out” of the desert and “lead them in” to
the Promised Land. He prays for a Shepherd for the people.
It is a
prayer that God honored throughout the history of Israel – first with Joshua,
and then with the Judges and David and finally Jesus. All served as an answer
to Moses prayer, that God would provide a shepherd for a nation that was full
of sheep.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Numbers
28
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