golden calves

My friend gives me his sermons to read, since I don't get out to hear him anymore. He was finishing one up today when I arrived to sling cans in the church pantry. I asked him what it was about, and he mumbled something about God changing his mind about destroying the people. Oh, you mean Nineveh? No, the Israelites. Oh, when Moses stood in the breach? Yes, that's the one. But his sermon wasn't really about God changing his mind. It was about fear.

He began by talking about the fear of falling being an inborn human trait. I think that's so, I did a ropes course once where I had to fall backwards out of a tree twenty feet above the ground. It felt like dying. Once the harness caught me, I laughed hysterically for at least five minutes.

But in this case, he equated that falling feeling to the way the Israelites felt when Moses was gone so long on the mountain. They felt abandoned, and abandonment I can definitely relate to... I remember waking up once as a small child and finding my mother and father gone. I screamed bloody murder for what seemed like hours. Apparently they were just next door for a few minutes, and couldn't comprehend the fit I was throwing. That fear was unbearable. It may have been the foreshadowing of my dad's later abandonment, and the reason I have issues (as they say.)

So Moses is gone. Gone a long time. Gone with God. And the link between God and Moses somehow got crosswired to God is gone. Aaron!!! we need new Gods. Anyway, my friend went on to talk about golden calves and Moses interceding, and threw in a quote from Herbert Driscoll about needing an ultimate focus for one's life... "a commitment that is ultimate". Uh oh. The "C" word. Be careful what you ask for, little girl.

But I got to thinking about just how necessary it is to try to find a substitute when God is gone. Not that God is ever gone. But He's a silent cuss sometimes, and it feels the same. The void is unbearable; the sense of abandonment is overwhelming. Faith helps. But faith is a capricious commodity. Once you begin the downhill spiral, it isn't easy to reconnect to faith. So the Israelites built a golden calf. (Not an especially intelligent choice, but they were probably working from memory and the available jewelry at hand.)

If God is my ultimate focus (and that's what I'm striving for) then when I feel deserted, what might be my golden calves? I can't answer that at the moment. But I think it's worth exploring as I face into this storm called commitment. When it happens, if it happens, I want to be totally aware of when I start melting down the jewelry.