JP: Sports, Finally

JP writes:

If you know me you know I love sports. And finally, God comes through with a sports blog! I was flipping stations on the truck radio as I was heading to the missions base when I landed on a sports talk program. Of course, I just had to stop and listen for a minute. The KC area sports teams generally are at the bottom of the standings regardless of the sport (reminds me of Atlanta's teams when I was growing up in the 70's.) Their fans must be conditioned to complain because that's all they did despite the fact that the KC Chiefs football team is 8-4 and in first place for the first time since I was growing up in Atlanta. Yes Tuffy, that's a long time ago. "The quarterback is not good (just named the Player of the Month for November) , they need to settle on using just one running back rather than two (this despite the fact that they lead the league in running the ball), why didn't they tell us one of the coaches was having knee surgery during the off week, blah, blah, blah..." People, they are in first place! Give them a break and enjoy it.

Then I started thinking. God must be thinking the same thing about us, the body of Christ in the USA. Just like the KC sports fans, we've been conditioned to complain. We're not satisfied. Our churches are big and beautiful with amazing state of the art audio/visual technology, but we still find something to complain about. We don't like the music, the sermon's too offensive, the sanctuary is too warm/cold, the coffee doesn't taste good enough. The same thing goes for our houses and cars. Someone else always has a bigger, nicer one. Our cell phones and ipods are "so yesterday". We wring our hands a complain because right now we can't afford to stop at Starbucks on a daily basis. We are constantly comparing ourselves to those who have more rather than those who have less than we do. Instead of stopping and giving thanks to God for how He has provided, we complain because we want more. It seems like we as a society are never satisfied.

Now imagine what the tribe of Levi must have thought when God divided out the promised land among the Tribes of Israel. The story can be found in the book of Joshua. God first told Moses and now reminds Joshua in detail how to divide the land. Nine of the tribes inherited land on the west side of the Jordan: Simeon, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, and Ephraim, plus half the tribe of Manasseh (Joshua 13:7). The tribes of Reuben, Gad, plus the other half of Manasseh, took their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan (Joshua 13:8). And I'm sure people were complaining because they didn't get river front property or didn't have mountains in which to build their weekend retreat. I'm sure that they wanted what the others had received.

But what about the tribe of Levi. Weren't they left out. In fact, it was as if God had said "Sorry, no land for you." However, he did provide them with an inheritance. "But to the tribe of Levi, Moses has given no inheritance; the Lord God of Israel is their inheritance. (Joshua 13:33, Numbers 18:20).

What? No land? I imagine many from every tribe thought that the Levites had received a raw deal. After all land was and still is a sign of wealth and a means to more wealth. Ahh, but God knew that true wealth was found in spending time with Him.

The Levites had inherited the privilege of coming into the Lord's presence on a daily basis and serving Him. They had to learn to be satisfied with just the Lord and nothing else.

And that's the question that the Lord poses to us today - In the world today, if all we had was the Lord, would we be satisfied?