Today’s passage is Judges 2:1-10.
An angel of the Lord delivers a stern message to the faithless Israelites. Because of their turning away from God to idols, he will not drive out the Canaanites for them but leave them there to be a thorn in their side. They weep and sacrifice. After Joshua’s generation died, the next generation didn’t know God or what he’d done for them.
Why don’t they keep their covenant with God? What kind of thorns, what snares?
I am disobedient and turn away from God more than once in a day.
The god of school is a constant snare for me.
I have to read about trends in education, I have to visit classes and go to meetings always looking for ways to improve teaching and the school in general.
I have to argue with people who disagree with what I want to accomplish.
I have to deal with parents who make gods of their children.
I have to protect myself from the bragging of other school heads and the temptation of imitating them or doing something spectacular to arouse their envy.
All of this is a thorn in my side because I don’t keep my mind and heart on God.
At home, my brother in law is the big thorn.
God sent him as our trainer. Part of our training has been to teach him QT.
We thought that because he goes to worship and mokjang, he was learning to interpret his life through the word.
But he hasn’t. He’s just like Lee Tae Geun’s son, the middle school boy he talked about last Wednesday.
Although my brother in law is 39, he has the mentality, maturity and sense of responsibility of a teenager.
Lee Tae Geun’s son improved through QT.
My wife and I talked about her brother and what we have to do for him and ourselves before we move in July.
We believe God is pushing us to teach him how to do QT.
So that is what we will do.
It will be hard.
We have to make a daily schedule to sit with him and help him, train him.
My wife needs my presence beside her and her brother in order to do this.
I will be able to help with small examples that my wife can translate.
He will try to break the schedule because his habit is to run away and amuse himself, pretending he is studying for a real estate license because he has dreams of being rich.
But his mind and body are crippled, the result of the car accident he caused seven years ago.
He has not accepted his circumstances nor his responsibility for causing them.
Maybe God can save him through QT.
Lord, give my wife and me the courage, inspiration and love to endure the trial of teaching her brother how to do QT.
