Today’s passage is Numbers 7:1-11. When Moses finished setting up the tabernacle, he anointed it and the furnishings, and the tribal leaders brought offerings of wagons and oxen which were given to the Gershonites and Merarites for their work while the Kohathites received nothing because they had to carry the holy things themselves. Then the leaders brought special offerings for the altar’s dedication.
Useful Gifts
When I came to Wooridle ten years ago, we had only one place to worship, the spaces we rented at Hwee Moon School.
Pangyo was just a hope, then a plan, and finally a debt-free reality.
It was originally designed to replace Hwee Moon but we grew so much that we had to keep renting Hwee Moon too!
I remember the fund-raising for Pangyo.
My wife was surprised at the amount I committed myself to but, like the offerings of the tribal leaders in today’s readings, I needed to give something substantial as a token of all that God had done for me by giving me a new wife and a spiritual community that focused me on a lot of badly needed repentance.
Late in life I was learning what was truly important and to put my money there.
At the same time I was in an argument with the Canadian government about access to what was left of my pension fund. As with all funds, it was invested in stocks.
They had done well but I greedily wanted it to do better and had transferred some of the money to higher performing stocks.
Everything went well until the financial collapse of the 90s when I lost most of my pension fund.
I wanted what was left to pay debts but the government said I hadn’t completed a form years ago stating I was leaving the country indefinitely.
I had never heard of such a form, but I completed it with self-righteous complaints, waiting for the special number they would give.
I was repeatedly rejected my official exit, which I needed to access my badly shrunk pension fund.
At this time Wooridle was teaching me the invaluable lesson that problems in my life were all my fault.
Even things that were clearly not my fault? I asked. Yes, everything was my fault. Repent, I was repeatedly told.
I came to see the truth of that lesson and peeled back more layers of my self-righteous victim mentality that kept me from seeing just how much of a victimizer I had been to others and how much I was demanding special status for myself.
I completed the government form one more time and included a letter of apology taking all the blame on myself.
Shortly afterwards I got my exit status and my access to my pension. Most of the money I gave to the Pangyo project.
When Pangyo was completed I felt what I imagine the tribal leaders felt in today’s passage.
At that time, my wife and I lived in a poor villa in Ansan because I had a poor job. I could have made a payment on an apartment, but I chose to make a payment on my spiritual home and serve my spiritual community.
My habit of grumbling continued, however, and I complained about Pangyo being too shiny and too easy, saying Hwee Moon retained the true spirit of Wooridle with our relatively poor and cramped conditions where we have to set up and take down every Wednesday and Sunday.
It’s time for me to stop my grumbling.
At Pangyo today I witnessed the long-delayed marriage of friends.
They have been engaged on and off for ten years and today they finally completed their union and were consecrated in holy matrimony.
Because of Pangyo’s many rooms, they could be married there and not at a wedding hall. I helped prepare that place for them and I need to be grateful for that, not grumbling about it.
Application: never grumble about Pangyo again.
Lord, thank you for my spiritual community. Keep me truly faithful to our suffering, confessing, repenting, praising and praying community that seeks to glorify you in this world.
