Lev. 14
Yeah…I thought the laws for declaring leprosy were complex!! Turns out, being declared clean ain’t no easy thing either! I still feel like all those details must have some significant meaning, I just don’t know what it is. Maybe some of it is just a test for obedience – to see if people’s hearts are set on obeying the LORD or if they think they can do things their own way. I suppose you could say that true obedience is in the details.
Mark 8:1-21
Why are human beings so dim-witted? The Israelites complained constantly in the wilderness and questioned God at every bump in the road. The disciples saw Jesus feed 5000 men (plus women and children) and then asked how they could possibly feed 4000. And, truth be told, we likely do the same kinds of things in our own daily lives. Are we stupid?!? Why is it that we can’t see these things?
It seems that the sin nature borne in us with Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden does not make us “all knowing”, as Satan promised Eve, but, rather, makes us gods in our own eyes. Perhaps, at the heart of it, Adam and Eve’s sin, by eating that forbidden fruit, was not trusting God. They chose to believe what Satan told them, putting doubt in their minds about what God had said. Had they truly believed what God said, had they trusted that He had told them the truth, they would have obeyed Him and not eaten, no matter how good it looked. But they didn’t trust. And so we struggle with trust as well, thinking we know best or that God is holding something out on us. We think we know how things are; how things work, what we need, or even want. But we don’t. We don’t understand at all.