Monday, July 28, 2014

Monday, July 28, 2014
Joshua 24: 16 - 33

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (15)

This well known statement by Joshua immediately precedes today’s passage. Joshua had challenged the community to make a choice: serve God or serve someone/something else if that seems better.


“We’d never forsake God! Never! We’d never leave God to worship other gods.”(16)

The people choose to serve God; enthusiastically they make that choice. They say how well God has treated them in the past, how He has stood by them through everything and made their lives good. Of course they will worship him.

Choices of commitment are familiar to us - probably the most common is that made in marriage where similar questions and challenges are put to the two being married: Will you...will you...will you? The enthusiastic reply is I will! Or at baptism, when parents and Godparents make promises for their child. Again, will you..., will you...,will you? I will, with God’s help!

I like that final bit, with God’s help. For as Joshua realized and told the people, “You can’t do it; you’re not able to worship God.”(19) How true! I too have chosen to serve God - over and over again. Why over and over? Because I fail over and over and have to try again. I am reminded of Paul saying how frustrated he becomes with himself when he does the things he doesn’t want to do, and doesn’t do the things he does want to do!! (Romans 7: 14-20) Is that ever true!!! Jesus himself knew this and said “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41)

So, should I just not bother to choose or to make the promise if I know that I can’t keep it 100%? No! Giving up on myself isn’t something God does, so I should not either. Rather, I should remember that God forgives me every time, but also says to go and sin no more. Learn from my mistakes.

In our reading, the people too are unwilling to give up; they reaffirm that their choice is to follow the Lord. If that is so, says Joshua, they need to make some practical things to assist them in their choice: “Get rid of all the foreign gods you own. Say and unqualified Yes to God.”(23)

Ahhh. There’s the rub! What are the foreign gods in my life that I need to get rid of? What things in the surrounding culture pull my allegiance away from God? What things do I value more than I value God? (Where my treasure is, there my heart shall be.) It may not always be things, but perhaps ideas or attitudes. As we were challenged last Sunday, I can choose hope and inclusion. Perhaps the attitude shift is what serving God is all about: it is how we seek and serve Christ in every human being. Jesus gives another way to assist in keeping my promise to him: pray.


And so I do recommit myself to God. I will try again, today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Jesus called me to be perfect ... so practise!

Blessings


Ann Kelland