One night during my high school years I was at a movie theater with my friends. I purchased a bag of popcorn to eat during the movie. At that age I was a serious long distance runner and did not have much concern for the gallon of fatty, fake butter that was poured over my corn. It was a delightful mouth of salty butterness. Some time into the show, I froze. Danger. Very serious danger was in my mouth! Trying to keep composure of both my outward reaction and my gag reflex, I began to pull a very long tangled mess of popcorn and hair out of my mouth. Even worse was the fact that I had unknowingly swallowed part of it though it was still attached. Extracting it was NOT fun.
At that point, what do you do? You can complain to the manager, but none of that theater's popcorn is going to make its way back into my mouth. The ordinary (someone else's hair) had already mingled with the holy (my popcorn). May it never be!
The closing of 1 Samuel 6 is quite similar if you think creatively about it. The Ark of God was holy. And God intended for Israel to also be a holy nation. ("You shall be holy as I am holy." Lev. 11:44-47) On the contrary Israel mingled with the ordinary, Godless nations around them. It affected how they treated the Holy God.
For example, Israel saw the Ark being carried home by two milch cows pulling a cart and made a burnt sacrifice is made from the cows and the cart. As I read I think, "They've got it. They are using the ordinary to honor God." Yet, ignorant and enjoying idolatry, Israel forgot the holiness of God. Men curiously peered into the Ark as if it were ordinary, but God had instructed them otherwise.
By their sin these men fell to death at the hand of a holy God. What is holy was not intended to be mingled with ordinary, Godless elements. Holiness is meant to define the ordinary, but in our sin we use the ordinary in rebellion against God. Like a hair in the throat of God is our ignorant mingling of the holy and the ordinary for selfish pursuit.
To apply this principle, I find myself convicted of worshipping the image in the mirror as if it defines who I am and what I will be worthy of, but God has instructed me to find my worth and my value in Him. He is the source of my worth and my very body is called a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). By letting the ordinary define my life, I will have a failing standard to judge by. But keeping my heart tuned to the Holy One allows me wisdom and help in removing the unholy hair from my popcorn.
© 2006 by Kendra Hinkle.
1 comment:
Hey Kendra! Hair in your popcorn, what a GREAT analogy! I love your application too. It's so easy to focus on ourself. If we were dead to ourselves, and not entangled in ourselves, then we would be able to relish divine things, and to know something of heavenly contemplation.
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