Groovy 70’s
Linda is away during March, Clayton Bjelan brings you today’s devotion.
Misunderstanding can lead to some humourous situations
Reference: ch 22 v16 “The whole assembly of the Lord says: ‘How could you break faith with the God of Israel like this? How could you turn away from the Lord and build yourselves an altar in rebellion against him now?’” (TNIV Bible)
Explore: I remember a party that my wife and I were invited to, billed as a 70’s party.
We knew that there would be heaps of big wigs, platform shoes, flared pants, large gold chains and bright, psychedelic coloured clothing. And that certainly turned out to be the case.
But, we wanted to be a bit different so we pretended to be IN our 70’s. We got the oldest looking scarves we could, we dressed in our dressing gowns, took walking sticks and put talcum powder in our hair to make it look gray (I even made my own version of a hearing aid!).
We loved it, and nearly everyone else did too. But there was one lady who said to a friend of ours (out of our earshot – but we heard about it later)… “Oh, poor things, they didn’t realise that it was a 1970’s party, they thought it was come as someone in your 70’s”!!
Application: Misunderstanding can lead to some humourous situations – but also to some potentially serious (and in this case in the book of Joshua – near fatal ones).
The two and a half tribes who had their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan river, were finally allowed to go home, having served the Israelites fully in their endeavour to clear the land of all the people.
As they went home – they built a replica altar to the one that was in the tabernacle.
The other ten and a half tribes thought that, almost immediately, they had turned their backs on God and were setting up some other sort of worship practice (after all, the ONLY place you could make sacrifices was in the tabernacle).
In fact, these tribes were so mad (and zealous to serve God) that they were in the throes of preparing to go to war with the two and a half tribes (their own brothers and sisters whom they had just spent time fighting alongside!).
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and there was a discussion that took place and the two and a half tribes explained that they simply didn’t want the rest of the people to forget that they were indeed part of the Israelite community in years to come… so they built a replica altar to remind all parties that (even though they were on the other side of the river) they were still all one people.
Funny isn’t it how, with a little bit more perspective and understanding, something we thought was one thing can turn out to be the complete opposite!
Prayer: Dear God, help me not to jump to conclusions with situations or people. Help me to give people the opportunity to explain. Amen.
What do you need to see from another angle today?
This article was written by Clayton Bjelan