Lent Day 10: Saturday February 27
Theme for the Week: God’s Gift of the Ten Commandments
Exodus 20:1-4
1Then God spoke all these words: 2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Reflection: This passage from Exodus, which is the basis for the First Commandment, and an underpinning of all the Commandments reminds us both of God’s graciousness, and God’s demand that we honor God as our only God. The command part of this passage demands that we have no god other than “the Lord your God”. We often think that this is an easy commandment. Surely, we don’t make idols of wood, stone, or gold, which we worship. We wouldn’t do anything that foolish! Or would we??? Martin Luther defined a god as anything in which you “trust and believe…with your whole heart” and “that in which find refuge in all need” What do we really trust, and where do we seek refuge? Do we trust our own skill or ambition? Do we trust our savings and our assets? Do we value our home as the place of greatest refuge? In the lives of privilege and abundance which so many of us enjoy, it is easy to slip into depending on our own skills, assets and securities rather than placing our trust and dependence on God.