The more I read, the more I like. This guy's amazing. Here are a few nuggets from a chapter dealing with Leviticus.
"While Leviticus will provide a compass for the community during it's journeys, it does not promote a myth of certainty, claiming that it knows absolutely what God's will is for every aspect of life. God will have new words to speak in view of life's ongoing twists and turns, for the purpose of the law is the life, health, and well-being of an ever-changing community and each individual therein." [p. 125]
"God's creational order has been disrupted by disobedience and its effects, but God has redeemed Israel and provided means by which Israel can join God in seeking to keep right what God has put right, and to extend that rightness into every sphere of life." [p. 125]
"At this small ordered spot in the midst of a disordered world, in and through the various rituals in particular, God begins to work toward the objective of a world that once again can be called 'very good.' The priests of the sanctuary going about their appointed courses is like everything in creation performing its liturgical service - the sun, the trees, human beings. The people of Israel assuming their creation-given responsibilities in daily life are participants with God in making the whole creation correspondent to the divine intention." [pp. 126-127]
I love the last two quotes. They remind me that as a follower of Jesus, I've been brought into a much larger story that just the forgiveness of my sins. I've been brought into the movement of God is restoring and redeeming the world - including all created matter [as Colossians 1.19-23 reminds us]. Anything less than that is minimizing the gospel. Salvation is holistic. It touches every part of our lives, every aspect of our lives - our heart, our mind, our will, our fears, our dreams, our past, our addictions, our pain, our anxieties, our future, our worries, and our broken places. Every part of us is reconciled. We are then called into this larger movement. What has taken place in us is taking place in others. What is taking place in us - restoration and redemption - is also for all of creation. God is about making things good and right again. We are a part of mending the world [which the Jews called "tikkun olam"]. We have been invited to be a part of something so much larger than ourselves. We have been invited into something more beutiful than we ever imagined - the mending of the world, making it more "correspondent to the divine intention."
Now that is something I can give my life to.
I'm wit chew on dat daddy! Loves, Rob
Posted by: Robin | April 18, 2005 at 08:08 AM