Today’s passage is Numbers 18: 1-8. The Lord tells Aaron that he and his sons are responsible for offenses against the sanctuary and priesthood. The Lord has given the Levites to Aaron to join in the care of the tabernacle. He gives the priesthood as a gift to Aaron and he is responsible for the sanctuary and altar. All the offerings to the Lord he gives to Aaron and his sons as their share.
Responsibility
The words responsible and responsibility occur five times in today’s passage. It is one of the words I have most disliked in my life. I prefer the words status, fun, privilege, and importance, not responsibility. Responsibility is perhaps the area where I have most failed in my life and where most of my sins have been committed. Rather than a responsible son, brother, student, friend, church member, husband, father, teacher, principal, car driver, neighbor and citizen, I have consistently erred on the side of irresponsibility.
For most of my tax-paying years, I tried everything to avoid paying what the government said I should pay. I was angry about it because I didn’t see why I should pay so much. I resented others who made more money than I did but seemed to know the loopholes to get out of paying their share of taxes. It wasn’t until I accepted tithing to God that I accepted paying my income tax. It was a valuable lesson in responsibility--first to God, then to the world.
As a son I disrespected my father for most of my life. He was a responsible father, giving me life, caring for me and providing for me to the best of his ability and circumstances, yet I did not honor him till just before he died. When he was in the hospital, I asked his forgiveness and he gave me his blessing. My mother I resented and was disobedient towards because she was, I thought, so controlling and dissatisfied with so much of life. When my life collapsed in my 50s, however, I experienced her care and concern for me, and I began to look back on my childhood with her. It lead me to apologize to her.
I was an irresponsible brother until Wooridle training let me see my heart of arrogance and selfishness towards my sister. She irritated and frustrated me because she wasn’t like me. She wasn’t smart, couldn’t play sports and complained that everyone tried to control her. My own hardships and suffering helped me empathize with her and I learned to love her better.
As a husband, I failed utterly in my own eyes to be responsible in my loving care for my first wife, consistently choosing myself and my desires over hers. I failed to see her sufferings and her slide into alcoholism, and I committed adultery just before she died.
As a father, I was also irresponsible, concerned with making my children into objects of pride for me instead of seeking to help them grow into who God made them to be. I didn’t discipline them well, wanting them to like me rather than respect me. I did raise them in the church, but none of them regularly worship now, so somehow I failed there too.
In making my youngest daughter without marriage to her mother, I also showed my irresponsibility.
I draw a line of conclusion here because the list of examples of my failures to be responsible would go on for pages. I am a sinner but by the grace of God I am in a spiritual community that is leading me to interpret my life scripturally and help me repent more deeply.
Application: complete the tax form that the government of my home country asked me to.
Lord, forgive my trail of irresponsibility that I have lived and let me seek to be responsible in the way that you would have me go. Give me your strength to persevere for I am wayward and easily distracted by the allure of the world.
