Today’s passage is Numbers 10:1-10. The Lord tells Moses to make two silver trumpets, which are to be used for calling people to meeting, for breaking camp and setting out, for going into battle, and for times of rejoicing over burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Aaron’s sons are to blow them.
Trumpets
At my school today, the parents of our students came to talk to the teachers.
This is a hard time for everyone. For some teachers the time of waiting for the parents to come is very long.
For others there is no waiting at all, just an endless stream of parents! At noon I open the mic and call teachers to lunch.
I want to call them to prayer but I can only pray silently.
In today’s passage, the trumpet calls are used for everything, for meetings, for setting out to a new camp, for battle, and over sacrifices at festival times.
Although the trumpets are the same and the ones who blow them are the same, the purposes are different: to come, go, fight, remember.
In the midst of writing this, I am called away by my wife, who is downtown.
Come, she says. I get on the subway and meet her and a former church member whose son has run away.
The son is twenty and the father overbearing and twice-divorced, so perhaps the situation is no surprise.
But the father dreamed a terrible dream about his son last night and he needs to talk and repent.
My wife shares her testimony and I talk of my failings as a father. I say I treated my step-daughter and my biological children differently.
I explain that my step-daughter was given to me and I accepted her. But I felt I made my biological children and they were my possessions to control.
None of them went the way I wanted because none of them were me and they had to go their own way but I withheld my approval and my acceptance and they left me. This other father understands and says he is the same, a problem father. Like his son, he is alone.
We pray for acceptance of the situation and to wait on God. The father knows he must change.
When he does his boy will change too and return.
Lord, thank you for your call this evening. Thank you for showing me the depth of my sin against my children. Protect this man’s son and bring them both to salvation. Amen.
