stick with Him, and He will stick up for you

The Word for today:
Numbers 16:36-18:7

mark this:
So Moses spoke to the Israelites, and their leaders gave him twelve staffs, one for the leader of each of their ancestral tribes, and Aaron's staff was among them. Moses placed the staffs before the LORD in the Tent of the Testimony. The next day Moses entered the Tent of the Testimony and saw that Aaron's staff, which represented the house of Levi, had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds. (Numbers 17:6-8)

I like Aaron. I think about him a lot. And I think a lot of him.

He was approachable. While his brother Moses seems like a distant character—up there alone on the Mountain receiving the Ten Commandments from God—Aaron was down in the plain, with the people, and without a clue what God and Moses were doing way up there in the rarefied air.

He was the kind of guy (as they say, but not in Bible blogs) that you could have a beer with. He knew what it was like to mess up big time (see “Calf, Golden”) and he knew what it was like to try and weasel out of the big time mess he’d made (see “Calf, Golden,” again).

He knew what it meant to play second fiddle (see “Moses, Prince of Egypt").

He knew deep, deep sorrow. He’d lost two sons (see “Nadab and Abihu”) because, well, basically because they were screw-ups like him.

But he dared not find fault with God, so he just hid his sorrows in his heart, like we must when that’s the only place to hide them from ourselves. He just kept going, just one more step, just one more day, losing himself in his work until, over time, he found his groove, becoming a beloved priest and servant of God.

When they buried him, far short of the Promised Land, the whole nation closed down for 30 days. They would later mourn for Moses, too. But I don’t think they mourned for their superstar like they’d mourned for the second fiddle who had stopped to pet their dogs and somehow remembered the names of their kids.

***

Wherever Aaron went, his walking stick went with him. That stick was the biblical version of Linus’ security blanket—always at hand and always at the ready.

He’d watched it turn into a serpent, which devoured Egypt’s serpents. He’d seen it stretched over a retreating sea. But by far the best of all was when God made that old dead stick come to life.

When all the wannabes protested that this other, ordinary brother — with two golden calves and two dead sons in his checkered past — wasn’t fit to be high priest, that’s when God took matters, and Aaron’s dead walking stick, into His own hands.

When 12 rods — one from each tribe as God had ordered -- were placed side by side in front of the ark, wouldn’t you just know it that God would reaffirm that Aaron was His guy. For, lo and behold, the next morning one of those dead sticks had sprouted, budded, blossomed, and produced almonds!

***

They’re going to lay us all, side by side, in the grave someday. When they do, the naysayers will say that your past was checkered and that the God you placed your hope in is as dead as you are.

But there will come another day when, because you identified with God, he’s going to identify with you. Believers’ bodies, strewn across the land like so many dead sticks, indistinguishable from the others in the pile, are going to rise from their graves just like God’s own Son rose long ago.

All of God’s sons—Jesus, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Lazarus, you, Lou, and Sue, too—will be confirmed by resurrection. Those who publicly proclaimed Him their God will be publicly proclaimed His sons.

Stick with Him, and He’ll stick up for you.

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