Today’s Scripture Reading
(October 16, 2018): Leviticus 27
I believe that each of us has
something significant that we are gifted to do, a difference that we can make.
I often teach that part of our challenge in life is to find that something. I
cannot imagine going through life just putting in the hours and hoping that the
weekend will come quickly. We spend so much time working that it makes sense
that whatever it is that we do, we should enjoy it. And just a note to
employers, life is too short for your employees to want to put up with abuse.
Everything that we can do so that we can make the most of our work hours is repaid with productivity. Having a stress
free workplace is important if you want to
get the most of your workers.
I am a pastor. That means that at some point I felt a call to minister before
God in a special way. The best advice that I have ever heard about entering
into some kind of vocational ministry is
that if you can do anything else, do that. But if the call to ministry is
overwhelming, and good people agree that you have the gifts and temperament for
the job, and you have rejected everything else, then and only then, take a
position as a pastor.
Life in the pastorate hard,
filled with stress and the temptation to be always on call. And the truth is
that there are very few who can live the vocation throughout their careers. I
have known many pastors that have walked away from the pastorate, and many that
would never return to their positions in the church. People can be harsh
taskmasters, and the demand to live up to their ideals is impossible to
fulfill. But, for many of us, we are called, and
we simply can’t conceive of doing
anything else.
But in ancient Israel, not
everyone could fulfill that kind of role in the religious life of the nation.
If you were not of the tribe of Levi, you were forbidden to fill any kind of a vocational role in the Temple. If you
felt the call of God on your life, the only way to fulfill the call was to give a specific amount into the Temple treasury
voluntarily. In this way, you
recognized God’s call on your life and your commitment to be totally available for him. This process could
also be done for a child. To consecrate your child to God, an offering was made in the child’s name into the Temple
treasury. It was the only way that a non-Levite could answer this kind of
desire to serve God.
A radical (yes, really radical)
modern extension of this idea might apply to
all of us pastors who decide that we need to leave full-time ministry. By becoming pastors, we have been consecrated to God. What would it look
like if to leave the ministry, we had to redeem our lives by buying them back? An
unenforceable concept, but it might serve as a reminder about who it is that we
are actually serving in our day to day
lives, and in the mundane activities that make up our time in the church.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Numbers 1
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