ELOGOS for Thursday

Exodus 32:7-8
The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!
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As a child, I loved this story. It was visual and lots of action. Moses going up and down the mountain. People getting impatient with and making a golden cow to worship instead.  A child could spectate on this story sympathizing with the altitude challenges of Moses and quickly identifying how silly cow worshippers are.  When the inevitable grown-upness happens, we agonize with Moses frustration because we understand frustration all too often and well.  We understand shifting our adoration to things that hold more instant gratification of shallow promises and meaning. The only way to tolerate the story is to remember how amusing it was to us as a child. It always feels better to laugh at the silly people than to BE one of the silly people. The amazing part of the story is that God kept loving those silly people dancing around a golden cow on a stick even though he had tough words for the dancers.   If God could keep loving them, that bodes well for the rest of us.
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Holy God, keep us ever in your will and on your way. Amen.