Contemplative Bible Reading

Psalms 106:19-20 (New Living Translation)

¹⁹ The people made a calf at Mount Sinai;
they bowed before an image made of gold.
²⁰ They traded their glorious God
for a statue of a grass-eating bull.

I guess we file this one under:

How stupid can people be?

These verses are about the people that Moses led out of slavery in Egypt. They departed Egypt after a string of miraculous signs. What did they do in less than a month?

They traded their glorious God
for a statue of a grass-eating bull.

What? Yes, they literally traded God for the statue of a cow – something that depends on grass for life. No grass, no cow.

They were worshiping the almighty power of grass.

I guess now I should list some examples of similarly stupid things that we do today. Let’s see, we worship the:

• hands on a clock
• markings on a calendar
• scrawling in a checkbook
• fabric draped over our (usually overweight) bodies

We could continue with the list, but what is the use? What other stupid things do we worship these days?