Two Pair

The 10 Commandments are found outside our Church on tablets near the Hall entrance.   Every time I pass by them I think they’re gravestones – not well placed, of course.  Even so, they are constant reminders of what we all should heed.   They are not-so-gentle reminders of God’s “commands.”

Looking like tombstones, they call to mind today’s first reading from Deuteronomy (4:1, 5-9).   After asking, “…what great nation has statutes and decrees that are just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?,” we are told: “However, take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live…” 

I say they appear to be grave markers because those important commands have become just words for so many people throughout our nation.  They seem buried under the earth and pushing up daisies.   Many (most?) of our political leaders pay them no mind.

It’s up to all of us to take to heart the end of the reading: “but teach them [commandments] to your children and to your children’s children.”  Amen! 

The snow melts away from the tablets; we must open those “graves” to raise up, teach, and live the commandments for all our children and children’s children to see.  

Perhaps we need another set of tablets on which the Jesus’ beatitudes should be emblazoned.   They’d make a great two-pair.

Deacon David Pierce