​Exodus 32
 
Although the immediate issue seemed to be an absent leader, whose whereabouts was apparently suspect; the worship of the gold bull-calf by the Israelites in the Sinai desert soon after their Egyptian liberation has always perplexed me. Imagine, just coming off the ten impossible-to-replicate Divine signs and wonders in Egypt, walking on dry ground across a parted sea, and watched the whole of Pharaoh’s pursuing army drown. And to top it off, soon after, observing for forty days, a fearsome divine display on Mount Sinai. The dismayed Israelites turned around, and demanded that Aaron make an ‘elohim’ to lead them forward (v.1). This is incredible. Of the 2,600 occasions mentioned in the Old Testament, ‘elohim’ referred to the God of Israel in over 2,055 times, but it can also mean a deity, a prophet, an idol, or a heavenly being. How did ‘elohim’ turned out to be a golden calf (vv.2-4)?
 
The symbol of the calf as a deity was not unfamiliar in near eastern religions at the time. It was often represented for its strength, and equated with God even by the Israelites (cf. Num 23:22; 24:8). Did Aaron mean it benignly as a pedestal for God to be seated invisibly, not unlike the throne above the cherubim with the mercy seat which had yet to be crafted (cf. Eze 1:10, where one of the faces of the cherubim is a bull)? Aaron’s intention was to have the people keep faith with the Lord; and he used God’s proper name when he said, “…Tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh”’ (v.5). The next day began well, when they offered burnt and peace offerings, but it soon descended to a level where eating and getting drunk, with unbridled sexual activities being enacted (v.6: the word ‘play’ in most translations, connotes sexual involvement – the same word used in Gen 26:8 for ‘fondling or caressing’). Their behaviour indicated where their faith lay. In this instant, Aaron broke the second commandment (20:4), and the people, the first (20:3). 
 
However, there are important presumptive lessons in this story. Once words are materialized, as in this case represented by a crafted creature or an entity, it speaks louder than the utterances. The Israelites’ conduct illustrated that whatever religious authorities may have intended, the perception of the peoples’ prevalent views may be very different. That was Aaron’s gravest lesson. Although God accommodates Himself to human understanding and linguistic limitations, He does not tolerate divine symbolic representations per se; the obvious danger being that one generation’s symbol can be the next generation’s idol.  
 
We began with leadership, and we end with it. In Moses’ absence, the Israelites’ impetuosity and individualism drove them to choose a divine symbol to lead them. Perhaps it does exemplify how tenuous the Israelites’ faith was in Yahweh. This lesson for Aaron and the Israelites was a costly one. Before we judge them too quickly, a parallel with ourselves can be drawn as we at times invariably fixate on our church or theology, church-related activities or our human leaders and pastors, eclipsing our focus on the eternal Yahweh, whom we serve. For the people of God, this ageless message is loud and clear, despite the fact that our gods may verge on a subtler modern form! “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth” (20:3-4). Our daily thoughts with our ensuing behaviours become witnesses as to the reality of our devotion and faith, or the lack of them, to our Saviour.

​Psalm 86: 5 – 7; Proverbs 25: 4; Isaiah 40: 28 – 29, 31.
 
Some time ago, a friend was describing the recurrent symptoms of one of her contacts, who had resisted any earlier help. I felt her behavior patterns sounded familiar. As I had some free moments, I offered my services, on condition that the young lady would be willing to see me at short notice, and be honest in response to my probing. Surprisingly, an appointment was set up that evening. Surprising, because she was an extremely private individual. 
 
What transpired was like attempting to peel an onion’s skin; each sensitive layer revealed a traumatic event with its accompanying emotions (Matt 5:4). A couple of these incidents she had kept under wraps since her childhood as a result of shame and guilt, even though none of them were directly attributable to her own wrong doing. Her fears had entrapped her for over 20 years. Although she knew her behaviour was abnormal, especially under elevated stress levels, having lived with it through adulthood, she had normalized their abnormality. She concluded that she need not seek external help. The sad outcome is an anxiety-ridden life with its range of physiological symptoms.
 
God created us in imago Dei (viz., bearing His image; Gen 1:26-27), with the windows to our souls focusing on Him (Acts 17:28; James 4:8), and with a level of relational transparency in the Christian community (1 Cor 12:18-27; 1 Pet 3:8-9). A clear conscience in all circumstances would be another description of this mindset. However, when we bury unpleasant incidents that had traumatized us deep within our consciousness, our personality becomes warped as time passes, thereby degrading the imago Deo in us. 
 
On this occasion, she was in the midst of a highly stressful situation. God’s timing is perfect and His appointments for each of us is impeccable. In responding to His prompting to listen, was God’s appointment for her to start coming to terms with her traumas. Perhaps her imprisoned secrets are safer with a stranger? Despite her fears, it was the beginning of coming to terms with herself, and for the first time, gaining some insight and understanding of her crippled perception on life. Thankfully, we have God and He always takes the first step with us, when we allow Him to do so (Matt 11:28-30).  
 
We are not often aware of our own peculiar idiosyncrasies. When they are benign, most would turn a blind eye to them. However, if they are not, that is the reason God has put us in community; so that others who love us, are able to identify them and help us overcome the deficiencies that can hamper our growth in many aspects of life in Christ (Gal 6:2; Eph 5:1-2; Phil 2:1-5). Perhaps somewhere in our hearts there is a pain from loss and grief that we have yet to fully face. Ask God to give us courage to face those places of pain so He can comfort us. We need to learn to open those windows of our souls to trusted members of our Christian community, to humbly seek help when required (Heb 11:23-25), so that we may become more effective in contributing to growth in the body of Christ.  

​1 Corinthians 15: 1-19; 42 – 58.
 
The resurrection became an issue within the Corinthian church, and Paul wrote part of this letter to explain the reality of Christ’s resurrection and how it impacted them. The resurrection turned the early churches’ Jewish leaning perspective upside-down. Jews generally believed that bodily resurrection was only earmarked for God’s final judgment; hence Jesus cannot be the Messiah without the last judgment taking place immediately. This explained why His followers were not expecting it despite His constant reference to it during His last days with them (Matt 16:21) It totally flipped their belief system! This historical event compelled them to change their worldview, given the numbers that had seen, spoken, eaten with, and touched their resurrected Lord (vv.4-8; John 20:19-21:14). And as they reviewed their short history with Jesus, I am sure their whole regard for their Lord began to change, and what He had said and promised took on a more solid foundation. The resurrection imbued them with a refreshing and assuring new hope in God concerning their future security.
 
The resurrection also bore its own fruits that were both present and future oriented. Death gains its power through sin. Paul explicated that it was sin that was poisonous (the Greek word denoted the poison in a scorpion’s sting; vv.55-56; cf. Rom 7), and the law, not only was it unable to arrest sin, it goads it on, and possessed the power to ‘judge.’ Christ’s resurrection ensured a future resurrection for all believers, where they would possess imperishable and immortal bodies instantaneously (viz., death-less bodies), perhaps not unlike His own resurrected body. Paul’s paradox infers that death can no longer ‘kill’ the believer, even though the last judgment would be its determinant event. And this was because God had already given us the victory over death by transforming believers into ‘new creations’ (v.57; 2 Cor 5:17); becoming ‘real persons’ as God had meant them to be. These renewed men bore testimony to both an earthy-cum-heavenly image – an extraordinary Christlikeness, which is God’s redemptive conception of sinless man. And through Him the whole of creation would also one day be physically delivered (Rom 8:20-21). Paul’s exhortation denoted that it is this resurrection hope that would keep believers in every place and time from despair, and help them to stay faithful in Christian service by ensuring that their moorings are firmly anchored in Christ. They should continue to build up ‘the church’, and in time, their present struggles in ministry will be fully rewarded (v.58). 
 
An individual’s present journey is dependent on his future-orientation, be it consciously or otherwise. His life’s involvement and trajectory in achieving his goals belie his attitude and spirituality. As a believer, his hopes, if they were significantly positioned, would determine how he thought, lived his life and related to others. Several of Jesus’ teachings and parables addressed this perspective (Matt 6:19-21; 25:14-30; Mark 12:41-44). The greatest proof that Jesus’ work had been completed was His resurrection, for it entrenched this hope in God’s salvific purpose for man, and made the difference for Christians. The church’s history is also replete with examples of believers’ compassion to the sick despite the highly infectious nature of diseases at the time, praying for their persecutors as beasts tore into them, and being ethnically inclusive in a continually fragmented world. They stood apart simply because their hope was in a living God, who had their future firmly in hand. 

​Ecclesiastes 9: 2 – 18
 
Ecclesiastes is an interesting Biblical book, simply because it was written by a skeptic, calling himself the Qoheleth or the Preacher, whose seeming indifference to the things of God pervades his advocacy for several down-to-earth issues, including injustice. Life is unfair, and the world can be cruel and miserable. One moment, a person thinks that all is well, and at the next, life is maimed or snatched away suddenly. This world’s present hotspots illustrate the uncertainty of life around us. It is immaterial who you are, where you happen to be, or what you are doing, whether you are old or young, pious or an unbeliever, this human horror can indiscriminately hit anyone! (Eccl 9:11-12). Qoheleth’s perspective is not that the righteous are being prejudiced and the wicked preferred in society, but that whoever you are and despite your accomplishments, they will come to nothing, since no one will ever remember them despite our carefully crafted legacies and monuments (Eccl 9:2-3,5). So, he concluded, everything is absurd or senseless, as the expected outcome do not line up with the actual consequences in life.
 
That is not all, as the Preacher piles it on, obviously taking great delight in pushing all our buttons with his provocative assessments! Enjoy your life with all that has come your way with God’s approval - delectable food that gives you happiness and cheers you up, beautiful clothes and pristine grooming, a lovely wife and a fairy tale life, but like everything else, they too will not amount to anything. Whatever you do, do it well for there is really nothing in Hell! (Eccl 9:7-10). His disrespectful comparative of the Middle Eastern personification between the scavenging dog and the noble lion, crudely drives his point home, that it is worthwhile being alive as a corrupted individual rather than a dead righteous person. And the reason being that it makes no difference whether you are spiritually alive or dead because at the end of the day, if this is life, then moral distinctions no longer matter, for evil pervades everything and will outlast the upright (Eccl 9:3-5). His penetrating sarcasm would invariably dismantle our little faith in God, if we were to imbibe his urbane logic in viewing life from his purely human perspective. 
 
However, there is a spark of prophetic light as he dwells on wisdom, where he determines that the wisdom of a poor man is able to deliver his small sieged city from a great king. And even though this poor guy died ignominiously, wisdom is held up as exemplary before strength and wars (Eccl 9:13-18). In bits and pieces throughout the Book, Qoheleth assigns this infinite wisdom to God that is beyond the capacity of man to grasp (Eccl 3:11,14; 8:17). Life is multifaceted and our desire to comprehend its complexity, and to reign it in to our advantage, would always be found wanting, regardless of human wisdom. Therefore, it makes sense to centre our faith ultimately in our Creator God, who alone appoints the times and the seasons with His hidden purposes, but always with our best interests at heart. The Preacher paradoxically reckons as he finally concludes, ‘when everything is finalized, fear God and keep His commandments’ (Eccl 12:13).