Years ago I had
the great and well-intentioned idea to read the Bible from “cover to cover”. I quickly
learned, by the end of Leviticus, that the Word of God is best read and
understood when guided by the Holy Spirit and the “schedule” of daily readings
prescribed by the Church. I’ve heard
many very pious and intelligent people say that they also came to the same
conclusion. Reading the “books” in
consecutive order can grow quite tedious and—God forgive me for saying this—boring. Especially the Book of Numbers. But even Numbers has a few episodes that contain
practical lessons that the Lord wanted to teach Moses’ followers and probably us, too. For instance the lesson I'm learning today, as I reflect on Chapter 12, verses 1-13.
God had put
Moses in charge of the operations of the Hebrew people when they were held
captive in Egypt. Face to face God spoke
to him. “Now,
Moses himself was by far the meekest man on the earth.” So in spite of his one-to-one conversations
with God, Moses depended upon Aaron and Miriam to do much of the speaking and
PR work for him. As often happens when
people are the subordinates in an enterprise, but still have lots of the
responsibility and perform much of the behind-the-scenes labor, petty jealousy
of the leader often grows because he seems to get all of the credit.
Then the
jealousy gives rise to detraction, tearing down the reputation of the
leader. That’s what Miriam and Aaron
were doing. They found fault with Moses
on the pretext of the marriage he had contracted with a Cushite woman.
When God saw
what was going on, He demanded to meet with the three people involved and to
straighten out the situation. The Lord
became angry with the detraction on the part of Miriam and struck her with the disease
of leprosy. The lesson the Lord taught
was how repugnant He found people who belittled others out of jealousy.
Moses didn’t
retaliate against Miriam for her detraction, but instead pleaded with God to
return her to physical wellness instead.
I think that through this episode in Numbers, God is asking us to react
like Moses by accepting others in spite of their jealousy and belittling
comments. He wants us to genuinely
forgive and even pray for our detractors.
While praying our nightly “Examine of Conscience”, if we become aware of
others who might have ignored or ridiculed us during the day, it might be
profitable to question ourselves. How
willing are we to respond as Moses did?
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