Sunday, February 3, 2013

Day 34: Leviticus 13, 14 and 15


You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean (Leviticus 15:31).

This is, I’m afraid, a rather difficult reading pertaining to infectious skin diseases, mildew and… discharges. Let’s bring this to where we live.

A while back some people I know were quarantined in their apartment because of viral pneumonia – complete with a sign on their door and everything. The health department hadn’t gotten a handle on the infection and didn’t want it spread to the schools where the kids attended.

When’s the last time you heard about meningitis spreading through a college dorm? With all those kids living in close contact, that’s one of the health concerns of the 21st century… a fertile breeding ground for germs and disease.

Here we have the account of thousands and thousands of people traveling through the wilderness in close community – anything infecting one member could easily and quickly spread to others. Two things which scared any Ancient Near East people were leprosy and mildew. Infected people could not cohabit with healthy people, and infected homes could not be inhabited at all. So, in a sense, once these things got rooted in a group of people, this very effectively broke community, and God’s all about community.

That was then; this is now. What infections can break our God-given community in the church? Immorality? Gossip? Dissension? Resenting those in leadership?

TODAY’S MEDITATION
What can one person do to guard against anything that threatens community?

No comments:

Post a Comment