Standing Strong |
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Ki Tisa—When You Elevate
Exodus 30:11– 34:35 1 Kings 18:1– 39 Luke 9:28– 36 2 Corinthians 3:10– 16 |
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Imagine that you are in upper management in a newly acquired corporation. As you work toward your goals, the staff complains regularly about how things were better before the change of direction the company took. They challenge you regularly even after you have successfully taken them through incredible situations, where if it were not for the intervention of the new ownership the company would have surely collapsed. They have told you at almost every step forward that things were better before the change in ownership. The decisions you make seem to never be good enough for them.
Now as you are at a meeting with the owner of the company, planning the new direction for the corporation and the policies and procedures to ensure success, word comes to you and the owner that the employees are having a celebration using company funds to have a wild party celebrating the greatness of the old owners. The CEO tells you he has had enough with these people you have been leading, these people who don’t appreciate you, these whiners and complainers. They are all going to be fired and the CEO is going to make the new company around you and guarantees success with you at the lead. You won’t have these troublemakers around any longer. You will have a new staff devoted to you.
What would you do?
I know what I would do. I would tell the new owner, “Go for it. I’ve had it with these people, too.”
But this is not the example we have been given by Moses. Read this week’s parasha and you will see Moses said that the people who were worshiping the Golden Calf, the same people who kept telling him it was better in Egypt, needed to be spared G-d’s wrath. Even when G-d promises to make a great nation out of Moses, (Ex 32:10) Moses says they need to be spared. When G-d says He will write them out of His book, Moses stands in the gap and says that if G-d is going to take them from the book, He should take Moses also (Ex 32:32).
Wow! What an example of selfless love. Moses shows us what true leadership is and commitment to the people he is leading.
“No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend.”
Selah |
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Isaiah 11:6 2 Thessalonians 2:15 |