Today’s passage is Judges 19:1-21.
The concubine of a Levite in Ephraim commits adultery and runs back to her father. The Levite persuades her to return. Her father keeps insisting the Levite stay one more day. The Levite finally leaves late in the day, won’t stop at Jerusalem and arrives at Gibeah at night. No one offers them hospitality until an Ephraimite returning from his fields sees them. The Levite tells his story and says he’s going to the house of the Lord.
Why does the Levite leave his concubine’s father’s place so late? Why does no one offer them hospitality?
The Levite should not have a concubine, but when she commits adultery he shows love by reconciling with her.
At her father’s house, however, he shows how much he likes a comfortable life, how little he’s dedicated to his priestly duty.
Twice his concubine’s father says, “Refresh yourself”(5,8). Twice he says, “Enjoy yourself”(6,9).
And each time the Levite does.
When he finally does leave, it’s late in the afternoon, an inappropriate time to start a journey.
When it’s time to stop, he pushes on instead, again displaying poor judgement, saying that the Israelites in Gibeah will be safer and more hospitable than the Jebusites in Jerusalem.
When I was a boy and our family would go on a trip, my father had a hard time stopping.
My mother always got angry at him. When we finally did stop, it was always late and we had to set up our tent in the dark.
We could never enjoy any of the amenities at the campsites on the way to our destination.
When I got married and went on trips with my family, I did the same thing. I never wanted to stop until I reached my destination.
I always found something wrong with whatever place my wife or kids wanted to stop at to justify my desire to go as far as possible in our journeys.
When I rode a motorcycle through Europe with my girlfriend, I did the same thing.
The main reason we finally stopped was that my bum was too sore to continue!
One summer in Canada I paddled through the wilderness of Labrador with a team of whitewater canoeists.
We always argued about when we should stop paddling each day.
Even though my hands bled each day from the strain of our paddling, I didn’t want to stop.
All of us became exhausted and this led to bad decisions.
In the wilderness, if you make a mistake, it may cost your life.
There is very little margin for error.
We made one such error at the end of a portage, putting the paddles for all three canoes into one canoe and failing to pull the canoe far enough out of the river to be safe.
We went back for our bags and the remaining canoe.
When we returned, the canoe with the paddles was floating away into rapids!
Without those paddles we would be stranded!
I am a workaholic.
I keep thinking I’m not, but I am.
I want to keep at a task until it’s done, but most tasks are never done and I have a hard time stopping.
It’s part of the reason I’ve always worked at more than one job.
By not judging when to stop, I endanger my health, forgetting to eat or eating unhealthily.
I stay up too late and don’t get enough sleep.
When I exercise, I do too much because my judgment is flawed.
By not knowing when to stop, I rarely do my best work in anything because, like my canoe trip, I’m too tired to make good decisions.
Because of my life in the Lord, helpfully organized by my Wooridle life, I’m doing better.
Because I’m a school principal, the decisions I make affect far more people than just me.
Some of my decisions touch over a thousand people#8212;students, parents, teachers, and office staff.
If I don’t depend on God and prayerfully decide through daily Bible interpretation, I risk decisions made with a judgment more faulty than it needs to be.
Application: pray daily for God’s balance in my life.
Lord, heal my workaholic perfectionism, let me rest in you, have my being in you that I may judge the beginnings and endings of things.
