This isn't Genesis. Next time.
Thinking about wonder books, crafts, and stuff in general made me think about these things.
Jesus came with nothing and returned with nothing. We all do. In our culture, it's easy to forget that life is like that.
God made man of flesh and blood. We need stuff like food, water, shelter, covering, daylight, sleep, family, community, work - all basic needs for physical survival and basic mental health. Pretty concrete.
He also created us with spirits, emotional, intelligent, inquisitive, with a sense of justice, apt learners – the side of man that’s more abstract. Jesus came as a man, yet he was God. Concrete and abstract.
I thought about Hebrew holidays and about how kid-friendly they were with their concrete elements. But maybe those concepts were never intended to be as abstract as we make them.
Thinking about stuff made me think about graven images, things our hands make, which made me think about the tabernacle. God told us not to worship graven images but He gave His people a plan for a movable worship space made of stuff with stuff in it. God wanted a sanctuary in the midst of His people.
Today we think of God's sanctuary and we think church building. But think about a wildlife sanctuary and the word sanctuary takes on new meaning. He wanted it built a certain way. I'm guessing it was beautiful in a simple way.
So where were the kids?
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Margie,
ReplyDeleteGood thoughts. In the culture, the kids were probably sidelined a bit, left with the women until they were old enough. It's hard to find a way in which the kids were foremost in a culture that didn't even make much room for the women.
I think there really wasn't much of a place for children in the tabernacle, but the observation doesn't tell the whole story... the Israelites were commanded to teach the children as they were coming and going and generally living life, teaching the kids in the margins during the teachable moments as they went about their normal business with the kids alongside. It was the parents' responsibility, and they probably weren't included in the community worship until they were older.
The challenge for us now is that we no longer spend as much time with our kids on a daily basis... we farm them out to "specialists" for training and instruction.