Reflection: Death in plague proportions

Diaries don’t generally make gripping reading. Especially the diary of someone in captivity. My brother wrote one during his six-month captivity in Afghanistan. There’s a lot of the everyday, petty, insignificant same-same.

There’s no journal of the 40 years of Israel’s wandering. We can only imagine the tedium. The only recorded event during that time, though it’s not clear exactly when it happened, is this story in chapters 16 and 17. It’s full of numbers. Numbers in plague proportion. You really can’t abbreviate it for the confronting lesson that it teaches: people need priests.

“Didn’t God say that we’re all holy?” presumptuously grumble the rabble-rousers.

“We, after all, are his treasures. Of all people on earth, he’s chosen us. (Exodus 19:4-6)

“Not just you, Master Moses. And you, Friar Aaron…with your tribe of priests.”

Loved, chosen and holy, indeed. But only through the means stipulated by God. Priesthood is his idea. Priests can approach God and not die. What a costly lesson this was for the wilderness wanderers, in plague proportions.

And what a costly gift to the world when, later, God would provide the ultimate priest: ‘his only son, that whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)

Prayer:

Forgive me merciful Lord, when I presume to come to you trusting in my own righteousness.

Thank you for treasuring and persisting with your broken world. Again, I’m pausing to remember the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ: the only means through which, once and for all, you have removed our guilt (Hebrews 10). Humbled in the shadow of that cross help me and your world to flourish more in love and faith today.