S114P3 – Golden images: the comforting calf

Exo. 32:22-24

“Do not be angry, my Lord [Moses],” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

I walked away from my parents’ faith when I was just a young teenager.  At first, I felt a sense of freedom and no real need to find a deity of any kind.  The God-free life appealed me after a strict fundamentalist upbringing.  Yet, even though I had every intention of being the director of my life, there was something uncomfortable about not having that anchor beyond myself.  I would end up turning to any number of sources to try to get that comfort.  I thought I did not want someone to be Lord in my life, but I certainly spent a lot of time looking for a God to worship.  Regardless of what I wanted, I knew there was something missing without that direction.

Every time I read about the Exodus of the Israelites, I must remind myself that these people saw the mighty hand of God work in unbelievable ways.  They were very familiar with him, which makes us wonder why they would stray so often and so easily.  In this instance, their problem was that they could not wait.  Without Moses there with them and communicating with them, it was as if God was not there.  Something inside them grew restless, and they decided that they would create their own God to provide the comfort that was missing in Moses’ absence.  They wanted to move on, and they thought they could create their own gods to replicate the leadership the Lord had provided them previously. 

The golden calf never would have been able to do anything for these people but provide empty comfort.  It could not provide leadership or protection.  God’s people could not deal with the discomfort of not hearing from him for a time, and that led them to try to create their own counterfeit version of him.  Waiting on God can be uncomfortable, lonely, frustrating, and just generally unpleasant.  That does not mean that we go and try to comfort ourselves with an imitation of him.  There will be times when we simply must wait on him.  Father, teach us to be productively patient and remain focused on You during our times of waiting.