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Gospolution

by Jerry Ousley  
6/28/2008 / Christian Living

When I awoke early that Saturday morning and took a look out the window the ground was carpeted with a deep and lovely white coating. Overnight several inches of snow had fallen and even though I didn't look forward to driving in the stuff I had to give in to the beauty of that scene. It was a very wet snow and it not only blanketed the ground but also hung deeply on the branches of all the trees. It was a wonderland if there ever was one.

But trash needed to be taken out and cars needed cleaning off if we were to get this day going and fulfill all our plans. So I put on my coat and shoes and trudged out into the cold to get it done. When I was finished and on my way back into the house I looked behind me. The trash had been duly deposited into the receptacle and the once snow covered cars where now nice and clean, but oh what I had done to that beautiful carpet of white! Now instead of a smooth, untouched surface was foot tracks all over the place. The snow lay in piles around the cars where I had brushed it off. I had completely messed it up!

Man has a way of putting his touch on things. In our attempt to make nature more presentable we often leave our marks. It isn't always beautiful. Just think of how a forest looks after it's been logged out. Where once stood magnificent trees and landscape untouched by man now stands skinny, rejected trees those the loggers didn't want to fool with. The ground is cluttered with branches and dead limbs that were of no use to man. More often than not we leave behind a trail of destruction and mess. Maybe that's one of the reasons wildlife is so terrified of us. It makes you wonder.

In Exodus 20 God had just spoken the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel. After this He began telling them about how they were to sacrifice to Him. In verse 25 He told them, "And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it." In the King James Version of the Bible the word "polluted" is used instead of "profaned." In other words God told the people that when they took the rocks used in building an altar and shaped them they had actually ruined them. God wanted them used just as they were.

I'm afraid that our attempt to make things better even when it comes to our worship and relationship with God becomes no more than a polluted mess in His eyes. In the Old Testament God insisted for several hundred years that the people use the Tabernacle He had instructed Moses to build to be the house of worship. It was in King Solomon's day that an actual Temple was built. God resisted man's desire until then, but He finally gave in to David and allowed Solomon to build a Temple. It was a beautiful sight from its description but was it really what God wanted? It seems to me that He preferred nature.

We still want to get our hands into things. While I like using the New King James Version of the Bible we have literally translated the Bible into the English language to death. Each one has his or her own flavor to the words and if we aren't careful we find ourselves saying, perhaps indirectly, "God, it would have sounded better if You'd said it this way." While I completely agree that we need to have the Bible translated into words we can all understand I just wonder why we need so many different ones? It wouldn't have anything to do with making money would it?

While we might be able to find better words to try to tell people what God is saying (as if He really needs our help), we've got to be mighty careful that we don't throw our two cents in during the process. We might just find ourselves trying to build altars to God out of our own prettier hewn stone, or worse yet, making dirty, ugly tracks in the snow.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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