Today’s passage is Zechariah 14:12-21.
The Lord will send a plague to opposing nations that will rot their people’s and animals’ flesh, eyes and tongue. The survivors will go to Jerusalem every year to worship the Lord Almighty and for the Feast of the Tabernacles. If they don’t, they won’t have any rain. Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord, and there’ll be no more Canaanites in the house of the Lord Almighty.
Why the Feast of the Tabernacles?
Why will the cooking pots be sacred?
I am not a good cook, nor is my wife.
Most of our pots are not high quality because we are not good cookers.
We have an expensive rice cooker because my wife likes rice and we don’t want to waste it when it’s cooked.
We have microwave pots, one for fish and one for vegetables.
They can only go in the microwave.
They are distinctive, brightly colored and don’t look like normal pots that go on the gas range.
My brother in law is a poor cook because he is inattentive.
He does not look carefully at what he does, and he in unobservant, but he thinks he knows what he’s doing.
He put one of our microwave pots on the gas range, walked away to play on the computer and completely burned up the pot.
Only when billows of black, acrid smoke reached him in another room did he realize something was wrong.
He threw out the burned up pot, cleaned the mess on the gas range, and then denied he’d done anything wrong.
The event had just happened somehow.
The apartment stank. The kitchen mats had burn holes. The walls were coated in black.
Burned rubber and plastic bits coated dishes in the cupboards, books and bookshelves of office room, and even clothes in the closets.
It took 3 days to clean most of it.
We sent my brother in law out of the apartment for a day so we wouldn’t kill him and so we could work.
We still find bits of black on things. We have only one microwave pot now.
My brother in law is a great trainer. Without him life would just be hard in an ordinary way.
He’s here to make sure that I pay attention to the burning pots inside me.
There are no ordinary pots in my house.
They are all sacred pots because they hold my sins and the sacrifice of my repentance.
Without my brother in law, I might think I’m an okay guy most of the time.
He makes sure I see my lack of acceptance, my anger, impatience, and murder in my heart.
He shows me the burning pots in my life.
He shows me that I think they just happen, that they aren’t my sins.
My ongoing application is to serve my brother in law in small ways.
Last night, I made supper for him.
Lord, let the pots of my life be pots sacred to you. Continue to send your messengers to show me my sins that I may daily repent and beg your mercy. Give me an accepting attitude, an attitude of tolerance.
