Today’s passage is Numbers, ch. 8. The Lord instructs Moses on how arrange the 7 lamps, on how to purify the Levites, the Israelites laying hands on them, and Aaron offering them to the Lord. The Levites are to lay their hands on the bulls before sacrificing them as their atonement. Only the Levite men between 25 and 50 can do the sanctuary work.
Blocking the light
I was surprised to read that the Levites didn’t do full-time work until they’re 25 and then retired at 50.
Those are the years when a man’s power is at its peak, of course, so it makes sense that the sanctuary work would be done by truly able-bodied men.
Before 25 they’re learning the work and after 50 their natural energy ebbs and so they assist in the others’ duties ( 25-26). But that may be just my humanistic interpretation.
Maybe, spiritually, these are the years that a man needs to be focused on the Lord’s work in a community rather than on his own work in the world.
The time between 25 and 50 was the time of my life-changing sins, particularly adultery, the prideful and self-serving focus on my career, and the failure to love my wife and children in a self-sacrificing way.
Although I went to church every Sunday, my worship was mostly a long-standing habit that I valued and enjoyed but did not use to interpret my life and change my ways.
At 50 I turned away from my dying alcoholic wife, had an affair, and lost my job. In a way, God retired me, but unlike the Levites I had no spiritual community to meaningfully serve in. Until I got my new job at 60, I was basically assisting others, going from job to job, more a teaching assistant than a teacher.
Instead of arranging the light for others to see the Lord better, I was blocking it and casting sinful shadows. Instead of living in the light, I was hiding behind it, an unholy judge of others, self-righteous in my unacknowledged sin.
Today one of my students asked me to tell my story of being homeless to the class.
It was a God-given opportunity to show God’s action in my life. I arranged the light carefully, however, mindful of what would not be appropriate for the students to hear. What interested them most was not the death of my alcoholic wife nor my long denial of her alcoholism and its effect on my children nor even my time with a psychiatrist nor my job loss.
It was the phrase “God took me down to rock bottom.”
“What did you find there?” one girl asked. No one had ever asked me that before. Rock bottom, I said, is God.
When God allows everyone and everything to be taken away, I went on, you discover that rock bottom is God.
He’s there holding you. Rock bottom is a good place to find, I said.
God blessed me today by letting me arrange the light of his grace to shine for someone who needed to hear the story of how God loves this wayward son and, by extension, will love her if she lets him.
Application: sharing my story to a few teenagers.
Lord, let your light shine on me, my family, my whole church community. Help me live by your light and not block it for others.
