We take gift wrap seriously.  It is no mere covering to delay the inevitable.  My children take gift wrap to whole new levels of artistry and concealment.  The packaging is often as stunning as the gift.  Hours of thought and craft unfold to reflect the gifter, giftee and gift.  And beyond creative beauty, my children delight in suspense.   Gifts are wrapped in multiple layers, textures, and shapes.   Though we are somewhat predictable in our gift choices, the presentation never fails to surprise.  No amount of shaking, squeezing, assessing can reveal the contents.

For giver and receiver, the anticipation, surprise, and drama of the giving of a gift is often as much the gift as its contents.   My dad understood this.  Gifts, announcements, special occasions always came with a dramatic story.  What my dad lacked in artistic creativity, he made up in theatrical presentation.   Especially at the holidays.  

On Christmas Eve, Daddy would allow us each to open two gifts.  They were always presents from our Nana and Granny Wallace.   We knew exactly what they would be, what they should be.  They never changed. But Daddy kept us guessing, nonetheless.  Nana would invariably gift us a new pair of winter pajamas.  Christmas Eve would not have been Christmas Eve without fresh, festive pjs.   And Granny Wallace always gave us knitted house-shoes.  She was a prodigious knitter.  Each pair would be unique, personalized for each of us in some telling way.

I was always fascinated by those house shoes.  How did Granny create such intricate patterns and careful contours with just two needles and one long piece of yarn?  And how did she construct them so that they did not quickly unravel under the relentless shuffling of an eight-year-old boy.   The clever knitter knows how to cast a thing of beauty and durability, though every creation is vulnerable to the slipping of a single knot.  If the knot is not strong, a moment of stress can quickly reduce a hat, a sweater, a pair of house shoes to a nondescript pile of yarn.

Life can be like that.  We think our lives, our relationships, our culture are durable, solid things in and of themselves.   That their structure, history, and resources guarantee continued existence and growth.   But they are all vulnerable.  Their durability depends on what knot ties them off.   Whether they are tied off by the solid knot of God’s revealed Word and sealed by the grace of the gospel.  Or not.  Only that knot will hold up under moments of stress and sin.  

Sin is the disintegrative entropy that pulls us apart at every seam.  Only God’s good, gracious, and binding grace given in both the law and the gospel form the knot that will keep our lives from unraveling and becoming a disordered pile of yarn.  Contemporary discussions of ‘social justice’ are legion.  And a modern, secular, progressive culture disdains the ancient paths, simply because they are ancient.   Yet it is the Bible’s instruction on social justice that is more progressive, compassionate, and caring than any contemporary progressive has even imagined.

After giving the Ten Commandments, God teaches Moses how to teach people to unpack the moral law in the daily business of managing servants, anger, property, and relationships.  And Old Testament laws are not for individuals only, not extra for experts, but for life together.  The persistent use of plural pronouns reminds us that the law anticipates life in community.  And instructs us what it means to love the Lord our God with heart, mind, soul, and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves.   It is not left for us to decide what this means.  God gives detailed explanation and illustration in Exodus 21-24 as well as Leviticus and Deuteronomy.   Hardly antiquated, primitive thought, the Bible’s laws of social justice are the only knot that ties off the easily unraveled relationships in our lives. 

Exodus 22:16-23:9 seems to be a hodge-podge of various laws.  But there is a cord that binds them together.   They are not framed conditionally but as absolutes. They remind us to guard the dignity, worth, and rights of others as fiercely as we would guard our own.  Without this concern, the law and society unravels.   It is ‘covenantedness’ that is at the core of law-keeping.   It is ‘otherly’ love that gives proper impetus and motivation to do all God commands.   Without this, the command to love our neighbor as ourselves is always contorted by our desire to love ourselves at the expense of our neighbor.

Join us as we examine Exodus 22:16-23:9 and examine what the Bible says about our responsibility to love our neighbors as ourselves rather than using our neighbors in order to love ourselves.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.