RBWords

     In the Saturday cowboy movies of my boyhood, during one of the exciting chases on horseback, there would always come a sudden change labeled, "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."    Apparently Moses took too long up on the mountain getting the tablets of the law.  The Children of Israel got restless and took it out on Moses' brother, Aaron, who caved in and gave them a physical idol of gold made from their own jewelry!!  How they managed to turn it into the image of a calf out there in the desert is left to our imagination.  But clearly they were having a good time when Moses came down the mountain and provided us with a bit of humor about his breaking all ten commandments at one time!  He was not in good humor about the golden calf, nor was God.  The story of the golden calf is one with profound meaning right up to the present time.

     We cannot have a God of our own designs.  The great French philosopher, Voltaire, once wrote,  "In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.”   When, somehow, God seems distant or unresponsive because of something going on in our own lives, we look for a "god" that will take away the problem rather than address the problem ourselves with God's help.  Four of the major idols that often appear are power, money, sex and substances.  These golden calves will all, in the end, destroy and consume us, but the lessons never seem to be learned by a lot of people.  A "what have you done for me lately" attitude toward God opens the path to a golden calf.  A god of our own designs is merely an image of ourselves.  AMEN