From
the teaching of James 1:3, "not many of you should become teachers,"
which was the subject of the last post, I would say "bloggers beware." Or, "God is always watching." One of the large themes of Gospel of Matthew is the presence of
God. Below you will see that this is relevant to writers. But first, I can't discuss this subject of the presence of God without going back to childhood memories. The Christian faith welcomes children, as did Jesus.
Old Testament Presence of God
It's the Old Testament stories which first taught me that God is close to His people. As a first communion gift in 1963 when I was in second grade one of our neighbors gave me the hugely popular Catholic Picture Bible (1955 edition), by Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. (Fr. Lovasik died in 1986.) That was the peak of the baby boom, and no doubt many thousands of second grade first communicants got the same gift that year.
From that children's picture Bible I saw God testing Abraham, with Abraham about to sacrifice his own son with the knife on Mount Moriah and the angel swooping in to save the day at the last second. Skipping ahead, God comes to Moses in the burning bush, and then He displays his power through Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh in Egypt. God takes his people through the Red Sea, and then He is present with Moses up on on Mount Sinai where he gave Moses the law with thunder booming and lightning flashing. He was present with His people in the wilderness in the cloud by day and the fire by night, and providing His people with the bread from heaven. I was not any more spiritual than the average kid in those days. I mainly cared about baseball. But those stories did sink in. For me in 1963, yes my hero was the Milwaukee Braves No. 44, Henry Aaron. But when I flipped through those pictures in the Catholic Picture Bible my hero was Moses.
I'm quite sure that Moses was Jesus' boyhood hero as well. That's not just speculation. He came from an observant Jewish family which took the time to travel for the Passover feast. From the Book of Luke we know that even as a 12 year old boy, when Jesus came down with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem from Galilee for the Passover he went to the temple "where he [was] sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions ...." Luke 2:41-52. From that I infer that even as a boy Jesus knew how to read and that he studied the Torah, the five books of Moses.
Moses was a friend of God. As he taught, Jesus frequently referred to Moses by name, and he was up on the mountain with Moses (and Elijah) in the transfiguration. Of the Old Testament Moses stories showing the presence of God, it's the image of God talking to Moses in the burning bush that stays with me more than any other. Why? Maybe that enduring memory of God in the fire has nothing to do with spirituality. After all, boys are fascinated with fire. But if there is a spiritual reason for why the burning bush is a strong memory, it has something to do with the fact that this was Moses' first meeting with God, and perhaps that combination of the picture Bible and the first Eucharist was my first conscious encounter with Him as well.
Now 48 years later, I am looking at the text of the burning bush conversation where it says, "But Moses said to God, 'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?' He said, 'But I will be with you' ...." Exodus 3:11-12.
Lately I have thought a lot about the presence of the Lord God in the tabernacle, which was first a tent and then became the temple. One of the echoes of the temple presence in the Gospel of John is the teaching that Jesus himself becomes the temple, but that will have to be the subject of another post.
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| Carl Heinrich Bloch - Suffer the Children. |
Old Testament Presence of God
It's the Old Testament stories which first taught me that God is close to His people. As a first communion gift in 1963 when I was in second grade one of our neighbors gave me the hugely popular Catholic Picture Bible (1955 edition), by Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. (Fr. Lovasik died in 1986.) That was the peak of the baby boom, and no doubt many thousands of second grade first communicants got the same gift that year.
From that children's picture Bible I saw God testing Abraham, with Abraham about to sacrifice his own son with the knife on Mount Moriah and the angel swooping in to save the day at the last second. Skipping ahead, God comes to Moses in the burning bush, and then He displays his power through Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh in Egypt. God takes his people through the Red Sea, and then He is present with Moses up on on Mount Sinai where he gave Moses the law with thunder booming and lightning flashing. He was present with His people in the wilderness in the cloud by day and the fire by night, and providing His people with the bread from heaven. I was not any more spiritual than the average kid in those days. I mainly cared about baseball. But those stories did sink in. For me in 1963, yes my hero was the Milwaukee Braves No. 44, Henry Aaron. But when I flipped through those pictures in the Catholic Picture Bible my hero was Moses.
I'm quite sure that Moses was Jesus' boyhood hero as well. That's not just speculation. He came from an observant Jewish family which took the time to travel for the Passover feast. From the Book of Luke we know that even as a 12 year old boy, when Jesus came down with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem from Galilee for the Passover he went to the temple "where he [was] sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions ...." Luke 2:41-52. From that I infer that even as a boy Jesus knew how to read and that he studied the Torah, the five books of Moses.
Moses was a friend of God. As he taught, Jesus frequently referred to Moses by name, and he was up on the mountain with Moses (and Elijah) in the transfiguration. Of the Old Testament Moses stories showing the presence of God, it's the image of God talking to Moses in the burning bush that stays with me more than any other. Why? Maybe that enduring memory of God in the fire has nothing to do with spirituality. After all, boys are fascinated with fire. But if there is a spiritual reason for why the burning bush is a strong memory, it has something to do with the fact that this was Moses' first meeting with God, and perhaps that combination of the picture Bible and the first Eucharist was my first conscious encounter with Him as well.
Now 48 years later, I am looking at the text of the burning bush conversation where it says, "But Moses said to God, 'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?' He said, 'But I will be with you' ...." Exodus 3:11-12.
Lately I have thought a lot about the presence of the Lord God in the tabernacle, which was first a tent and then became the temple. One of the echoes of the temple presence in the Gospel of John is the teaching that Jesus himself becomes the temple, but that will have to be the subject of another post.
Relevance for Writers
Back to Matthew. In the last verse of the book Jesus says, "I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matt 28:20 RSV). Is that something to keep in mind while writing? Deacon Greg Kandra's guidelines for people who comment on his blog of course applies to blogging as well. He says,
Back to Matthew. In the last verse of the book Jesus says, "I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matt 28:20 RSV). Is that something to keep in mind while writing? Deacon Greg Kandra's guidelines for people who comment on his blog of course applies to blogging as well. He says,
The author of life is among us
— abiding with us, hovering by our keyboards, glancing at the furtive
tap-tap-tap that hurls letters onto an electronic screen, where they eventually
find their way into e-mail boxes and homepages and bookmarked websites, to be
read by countless others, who may then pass them on to others still.
We may not always know who
reads what we write. But we may think of those words differently, and give them
more weight, if we write them with the certainty that one of those readers is,
in fact, God.
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