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Aaron and Sons – passing it on
By Ruth Morrison
9th February 2012 | Category: Join the Journey 2012
Key Verse
“They will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.”
Main Content
Central truth: All we do today is not just for today, but for the generation to come.
You need a strong stomach to read this passage from Exodus: slaughtering a bull, cutting out the fat on the inner parts, burning offal and smearing lobes and toes. And what about the mess they made of the new robes! Having gone to all that trouble to array the priests in such splendour Aaron sprinkled their garments with hot sticky blood. No washing machines in the desert!
As I read these verses I am struck by a phrase which appears fifteen times: ‘Aaron and his sons’. The palaver is about a high priest passing on the inheritance of worship in the Tent of Meeting to his sons. Aaron was instructed to burn incense in the morning and again at twilight to make atonement not just for his own sins, but as a sign ‘for the generations to come’.
As a parent, I am challenged that everything I do speaks volumes to my children and grandchildren and that whether I worship, how often I worship and with what passion I worship really matters and may have an impact long after I am gone. The act of coming before an awesome God is described as ‘most holy to the Lord’ - more important, then, than anything else we do for our families.
Parenting, whether physical or spiritual, can drain us of faith and energy. I can recall standing on an African kopje on an Easter Sunday morning weeping in despair over one of my teenagers when God spoke to me a message of hope: ‘She is not dead, but asleep.’ Our job is to be faithful sons and daughters who worship through our tears and allow God to awaken our children.
David echoes this in Psalm 31 when he remembers being at his wits’ end and crying out for help, ‘I am cut off from your sight!’ He was in a bad way but he was convinced that God heard and answered when he called for help.
So whether we’re calm and collected in corporate worship or screaming in an emergency, God is paying attention to his children.
‘Be strong and take heart, all of you who hope in the LORD.’
Consider:
How can we hold on to God when we feel cut off from him?
How important is worship and taking communion in your life?
What messages would you like your life to pass on to the ‘generations to come’? Is there anything you could do today, no matter how small, to communicate this?
Ruth Morrison
I’m Ruth Morrison – wife of bassist, Richard, and mother to four adult children. In 1996 we packed our worldly goods, including our seven-seater Peugeot, into a huge container went to live in Zimbabwe, where I taught communication skills in a university and produced materials on family life and parenting for Scripture Union. Currently I am teaching English and we are facilitating the course on Parenting Teenagers in CFC.
