So, last year our church (as in the staff and congregation-rather than the building) took on the challenge to read the entire bible in a year, a plan was devised of different readings from different books for every day of the year. This year we decided to shake it up a bit and do the plan again but with a twist. We have a blog now, each day somebody new uploads a devotional to the blog for that days Old Testament passage. (If you want you can follow the journey found in my wee about me section on the right :))
As an avid blogger and professional writer (haaa, excuse me while i re-inflate my lungs) i thought it would be a fabulous idea to sign myself up as a devotional writer for a couple of the dates.
Here lies my problem. date of first blog-22nd feb. Old Testament passage? Leviticus 13-"Regulations about infectious skin diseases" how does anyone even relate to that? i mean really? aahh what a difficult passage.
I can't even find one key verse to choose that "jumps out at me" is the Old Testament really that irrelevant to todays culture?
-Maybe not, maybe I'm just not looking at it from the correct perspective.
In those times you got sick because you were sinful...
oh look the Old Testament just got relevant?
So essentially in those days skin disease=sin
so I'm totally not saying that the same is true for today but what I am saying is here we have a list of regulations that instruct us on how people in that time dealt with what we assume is their illness but in fact its about how they dealt with their sin.
In this time holiness and being at one with God was all about cleanliness and it was only a priest who could decide if you were clean or unclean. In order to make yourself clean you had to (obviously) wash yourself with water. If you were clean on the outside then essentially you could be"friends" with God again.
I don't know about you but personally I am mega relieved this is not the case today. (It's good to be clean and all but I don't live a perfect life so I would spend my whole time visiting priests and washing myself dodgy.com
I feel so privilidged to serve a God that is a personal God, that loves me and wants to be my friend regardless of my sin (not that this is a permission slip to live a life of jerkness/sinfulness) All I'm saying is that with Jesus we have the opportunity to come before God ourselves and repent and be cleansed. In OT times they cleansed the outside with water but in New Testament times Jesus told them that being clean came from the heart. Matthew 15 tells us that it is not what goes into our mouth that makes us unclean but rather what comes out of it. What comes out of the mouth comes from the heart and it is those thoughts that make a person clean or unclean.
If we can keep our hearts pure and remember that there is abundant grace from God then maybe we don't need to worry so much about whats on the outside...maybe thats the problem with today? People are too busy trying to make their outside look presentable their insides are rotting.
How is your heart today?
