Today’s passage is Numbers 4:34-49.
Moses, Aaron, and the leaders of Israel counted the Levite men between 30 and 50 in each of the three clans. The total was 8580. Each man was given his own assignment.
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Verse 49 in today’s reading struck me as a great truth of life as well as my greatest desire: “...each was assigned his work and told what to carry.”
When I was boy, my parents and teachers and every adult I meant always asked the same question: What do want to be when you grow up?
They all seemed to think I had the answer to my own life!
How did I know what I wanted to be?
How did I know what my purpose in life was?
How did I know what my future was?
Because I didn’t what work I’d been assigned to and nobody else did either, I stumbled around a lot, trying out different ideas.
In middle school I decided I would be a marine biologist because I liked looking at sea creatures and I was a good swimmer and Jacques Cousteau had an underwater special every year.
In high school I failed biology and chemistry, so that ended my career as a marine biologist. Generally, I wanted to be happy, so happiness became my purpose of life until I arrived at Wooridle Church after a lot of hardship and suffering
and learned that holiness was the purpose of life, which is really a rephrasing of the purpose of life stated in the Westminster Confession, which I knew but didn’t take seriously.
It says it is to “know God and enjoy him forever.”
So pursuing holiness should lead to the kind of happiness that I had not found looking in 8,580 different places.
Jesus is pretty clear about the purpose of life.
He says it’s to seek the kingdom of heaven.
If I had paid more attention in Sunday School, perhaps I wouldn’t have been seeking my life’s work in so many different places, never ever satisfied with what I was doing, always looking into the next field at grass that seemed greener.
God assigned me to be a teacher, which took me till I was 32 to see and accept because I didn’t want to be one.
I wonder how many of the Levite men didn’t want to do the work assigned to them either, didn’t want to carry tent poles or curtains but wanted to carry the ark instead.
And did the ark carriers want to carry easier, lighter, less precious things instead, worrying about the stress of dropping the ark?
When I was 50 God took away my teaching job. This was a shock to me and it took me years to realize I lost the job because, in part, I complained about it so much.
I didn’t really see what it was I supposed to carry, which was the salvation of my wife, my children and my students.
When I came to Wooridle and was made a mokja, I still didn’t see that it was my work to carry others for their salvation, just as I had been carried by many others beginning with my believing father, who must have prayed for me a lot, probably as much as I pray for my children.
Please, God, take care of them and guide them on the path to faith in you. For most of life I wanted to know what my assignment was and what I had to carry. Now I know. God grant me time enough to do it.
Application: Call my Sunday School students to encourage them.Lord, inspire me to accept with joy the work you assign me each day and the strength to carry the light load you have given me to carry.
