~ Being Real ~

Disciple: Day 25 – 27

Is it not ironic that I only started to fall behind in the readings once we had two weeks (instead of one) to cover the readings?

Anyway, Day 25 was about Jacob, Rachel, Leah, and the twelve sons. It’s a pretty funny story, when you think about it. I mean, here and Rachel and Leah, sisters both married to Jacob, and they’re competing for his attentions and affection by seeing who can have more kids. Oh, and they’re not just counting the ones they actually give birth to, but they’re also including the ones their maidservants had. And God’s going back and forth blessing one then the other with children. It’s pretty ridiculous, when you think about it.

For Day 26 (Joseph, Joseph’s brothers in Egypt, and Jacob’s move to Egypt), what strikes me the most is how Joseph made the Pharaoh rich at the expense of the people. He took the food from the people during the seven years of plenty and stored it up for the famine. You’d think that since he took the food from the people for the famine, he would give it back to them at a minimal price, if not for free (unless he actually paid the people for it when he was collecting it? Somehow I doubt that…). But no, he charged the people of Egypt for the food, and when their money was all used up, he took their livestock (probably not the healthiest animals at this point, but still…). And when their livestock was gone, he gave them seed for ownership of the fields. Moreover, he stipulated that a fifth of the crops from the seed had to be returned to the Pharaoh, so he actually only gave them four fifths of whatever amount of seed he actually handed out, in exchange for their land!

I know that anything is better than starving, but still, it seems like a pretty rotten deal for the people. I can’t believe that they actually thanked Joseph for reducing them to servitude”: “‘You have saved our lives,’ they said. ‘May we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh.’”

Really, I don’t know what to make of this. Was what Joseph did supposed to be a good thing?

Day 27 has a lot of questions, more so than other weeks, it feels. I actually started out reading the wrong page (page 30 instead of 28), and the question there just hit me so hard, I couldn’t really reflect meaningfully on the other questions.

But yes, the question:

. . . Abraham was willing to put both his future and the significance of his life into the hands of God—proof of true worship. Abraham passed God’s test; he proved faithful.

How willing are you to commit your future and the meaning and significance of your life to God?

And the answer:

To be honest, not very. Once in a while the thought pops into my head: “What if God wants me to be a missionary—to teach overseas in some remote village or town?” And I quickly squelch the thought. I really don’t want to think about it. I know that I shouldn’t be so complacently content to be comfortable in my North American, suburban middle-class life, but I don’t want to entertain the possibility that God might want me to leave everything that I have here to follow him.

Geez. Now that I’ve stated that so baldly, I don’t really have any choice but to deal with the issue. There’s power in words—particularly the written word—and now that I’ve verbalized what’s been going on in my head, I can’t keep ignoring my thoughts.

But I can put off going more into it now. I think (or maybe I’m just justifying another avoidance tactic) this is something I need to spend some mulling over.

There’s one other question from today’s reading that I feel I can answer honestly and thoughtfully: “The tithe is one response to God’s call that helps persons reach beyond themselves. Do you tithe? What are your reasons?”

Yes, I do tithe. Or, rather, I try to. Since I stopped working at The Woodlands, I haven’t been as diligent. It’s a lot harder to be faithful when I’m earning so much less; I guess that’s a sign that I’m not trusting God enough with my finances. But I do intend to fix that. I bought Quicken Cash Manager today, so from now on I’m going to be keeping better track of my finances. And part of that is knowing how much money I’ve got coming in so that I can tithe appropriately.

I tithe because it’s a way for me to contribute to the church community. Also, it helps to remind me that everything I have is God’s. I always cringe when I hear people describing offering as “giving back to God a portion of what he has given to us” during offering prayers because I don’t think that’s what we’re doing at all. There isn’t a distinct line between what is God’s and what is ours; everything we have is God’s; he just gives it to us to use and invest (steward). So the money we give for offering isn’t money going back to God (it’s already his!), it’s just money that we’re allocating specifically for the church to use.

The money I use to buy anime and manga is still God’s money. So is the money I spend when I go out for dinner with friends. And in the end, like the parable of the talents, I am going to be asked to account for how I’ve made use of what God has given me.

Scary thought.

But I’m not saying that it’s bad to spend money on things that I enjoy, or on going out with friends. I mean, particularly with money for eating out, I think that such expenditures are made for the purpose of building relationships and community, and that’s something that’s part of building the kingdom of God as well.

Still, I think it’s important that I’m starting to think more seriously about my finances. I don’t think I’m necessarily a terrible spender, but I do admit that I’m not treating the money as if it was God’s rather than my own.

Wow. A lot of things to think about as a result of this week’s study.