Be a Levite

I've recently joined National Community Church in their From Garden to City plan, reading through the Bible in a year.

I am the first to admit that not all of the Bible is particularly exciting. For example: Leviticus. Whoa are there a lot of details on rashes in that book. But obviously God let them be in the Bible that we read today for a reason, so I try to stay awake as best I can.

Since I jumped on the Garden to City band wagon a bit late I'm still catching up and haven't had the - ahem - joy of reading through Numbers just yet (which they did a few weeks ago ... and by the way, they aren't reading through in order, so don't get confused here). I'm sure that will be thrilling, just as it has been in the past. Not.

Nevertheless I am DETERMINED to get something out of it. So I did a little "get something out of it" boot camp this morning while trudging through the land allotment section of Joshua. Overall Joshua = good reading, what with the crumbling city, harlot rescuing the holy people of God types and tons-o-battles (including one where God full on STOPS THE SUN. Exciting stuff). But the land allotments? Not the highlight for me.

Pastor Heather pointed out via twitter the other day that while she finds the whole "you get this city, and you get this land" bit a snore, it was THE most exciting part to the Israelites. Hello, inheritance time! What's not to love? I figured, hey, if they can get into this, so can I. So I asked God to show me something interesting in aaaaaaaaall the boringness.

And He totally delivered.

Two things -- one I need to investigate further -- jumped out at me. The most significant one, which I'll share with you, was this:

"But to the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance; the LORD, the God of Israel, is their inheritance, as he promised them." (Joshua 13:33)

All this land being handed out and they get ... nothing? Not to say they were sleeping on their cousins' doorsteps or anything -- they were given cities in which to live. But no large tracts of land. Nothing on which to build an in-ground pool. No roads to pave with billboards to sell for advertising. Nada.

Instead their gift, a reward for getting all those people out of the land and sticking with God, was a relationship with God himself.

Now if I was a Levite, I would not be down. It's super hard to watch everyone else get way cool stuff and ... land ... (I'd take that over a Wii) while you get nothing tangible. But the Levites (at least at this point) understood that the privilege of a relationship with God was to be valued over any real estate. It was the thing of highest value in the world.

So I ask myself: do I recognize that truth? Do I value ... stuff ... and the tangibles of the world over a relationship with God? On what do I place priority? And what am I willing to give up to maintain the thing of highest worth?

Be a Levite.