Our senior pastor has been challenging the whole church to read through the Bible. Last year we read through the New Testament. For the most part that is easy. This year we are reading through the Old Testament.
I try to do my Bible reading as just that...reading. I love to focus on the story...not dissecting words and meanings and theological issues, but I try to just watch how God is working and relating and how people are living out their life stories in relationship to God's bigger story. That can be tought when you get to a book like Numbers. When you begin reading it is truly what it says it is...numbers! So, sometimes I switch to a translation like "The New Living Bible" or "The Message" - just to hear it in a more straighforward way.
Eugene Peterson says in his pithy introduction to Numbers,
The book of Numbers plunges us into the mess of growing up. The pages in the section of the bibilical story give us a realistic feel for what is involved in being included in the people of God, which is to say a human community that honors God, lives out love and justice in daily affairs, learns how to deal with sin in oneself and others, and follows God's commands into a future of blessing...we need a lot of help.
We need organizational help. When people live together in community, jobs have to be assigned, leaders appointed, inventories kept. Counting and list making and rosters (or data base systems like Fellowship One) are as much a part of being a community of God as prayer and instruction and justice. (Doesn't that make some of you with gifts of administration feel better!!??) Accurate arithmetic is an aspect of becoming a people of God.
And we need relational help. The people who find themselves called and led and commanded by God find themselves in the company of men and women who sin a lot, quarrel, bicker, grumble, rebel, fornicate, steal - you name it, we do it. We need help in getting along with each other...it follows that counting and quarreling take up considerable space in the book of Numbers...
I love that! It makes the book take on a whole new significance. And it helps me understand that much of what we do to shepherd a congregation is about counting and quarreling. I've never been good at arthimetic...but the arthimetic of people we are reaching and shepherding is VERY IMPORTANT to me. It is worthy work to learn a data base system and constantly update it. It is worthy work to input prayer requests and attendance every week (thanks to the women who do that...you will be rewarded in heaven!). It is worthly work to get small group/care group leaders to use the data-base system to shepherd their groups. It is worthy work to clean up membership and regular attender lists and to watch for those who are falling away. It is NUMBERS... a part of God's story.
Enjoy the book!!
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