Today’s passage is Numbers 1:1-19. In the second year of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt, the Lord tells Moses to take a census of the community with the help of Aaron and one man specified by God from each tribe, the leaders of the tribes. They called the community together and the people registered themselves. The men over 20 were listed by name for the army.
Duty and Desire
I have a few specific duties assigned to me by the church. Each of those duties requires me to follow certain rules. They are not onerous and most of the time I fulfill the letter of the rules but not always the spirit of them. When I fail to fulfill the spirit of them, I then find the simple duties onerous and I grumble.
Our mokjang meets on Saturday morning, usually at my house. Every few weeks, a mokjang member agrees to host the mokjang.
Sometimes that person changes his mind or chooses something of greater importance to him.
The mokjang is then held at my place and the preparations for it, which are usually a joy, change to a burden and I grumble until I catch myself complaining and then remind myself to give thanks to the Lord for the labor and my role of mokja.
One of my duties is to help train my assistant mokjas to become mokjas.
Their main duty is to record the mokjang sharings, say the introductory prayer and take the prayer sheet and offering to church.
They dutifully fulfill these duties.
They also fulfill their duty of following my lead in sharing their sins and failings in answer to our application questions.
Part of my duty to them is to read and edit their report so that they can learn to listen better.
But I never remind them to re-read the report once I’ve looked it over to see if they understand why I edited what I did. I also regularly fail to touch base with them about their contacts with our mokjang members.
My biggest failing of duty is with QT. Although I do QT each day, I don’t upload it each day because I agreed with my assistant mokjas to share doing it to help our mokjang members see a variety of QTs because we don’t have an English QTin.
Uploading just one a week meant I got lazy and focused on just one QT each week, letting my others get sloppy, which meant I failed in my duty to everyone including myself.
On Sundays, I go early to church for a Sunday School teachers meeting and then to Sunday School where one my students arrives to complain about Sunday School.
I don’t know what I’d do if he ever arrived full of praises for the Lord!
I often feel the same way as he does, but I know it’s important to show up for God no matter how I feel because my feelings about anything come and go and are no true barometer to my faith.
And because my complaining student always comes, I do too. I think he’s a better trainer than I am!
I do the duties I’m assigned to do, but too often I am too tired to do them well.
My desire for rest or doing nothing in particular conflicts with my duty. It’s the same conflict Paul felt when he said he didn’t do what he wanted to do but did what he didn’t want to do instead.
Application: to upload my QT every day again.
Lord, forgive my spiritual sloppiness. Let me be focused on loving others and helping them truly on their path of salvation.
