Piercing
Posted by: ba <ba@...>
http://www.forthright.net
Straight to the Cross
COLUMN: Thankful
Piercing
by A. A. Neale
I've done some piercing in my day. I've stapled my
fingers a few times with a staple gun. A needle
has pricked my thumb when I had to sew buttons on
my shirt. A know-it-all doctor pierced my skin
once with a scalpel, but I wasn't awake to feel
that one.
Piercing in this day and age, in the way it's
practiced now, was, and I suppose still is,
another rebellious shake of the fist at authority.
After all, you can only vary hair length by so
much, and that gets old. So the up-and-coming
generation has to think up something new to thumb
its nose at parents and authority figures.
One type of piercing, though, isn't as much
rebellion as it is the unhappy result of a lack of
trust in the invisible God and confidence in the
power of numbers. Spoken by a true politician full
of his own power and arrogance, these words came
from Jerusalem's aqueduct over its walls, beyond
which the Assyrian army awaited battle:
"Now look! You are trusting in the staff of this
broken reed, Egypt, on which if a man leans, it
will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh
king of Egypt to all who trust in him" (2 Kings
18:21, NKJV).
The description sought to shake Israel's
confidence in Egypt as a power equal or superior
to Assyria. Israel might make a treaty with Egypt,
hoping to strike a political and military balance
in the region. The Assyrian official hoped to
prevent that and prompt the king to give it up.
To King Hezekiah's credit, he takes a letter
written by the Rabshakeh, the same official from
Assyria, into the temple to lay it before the
Lord.
At that moment, Hezekiah avoided the piercing of
Egypt.
Not all the kings were so trusting in God,
however. And certainly not many of the people of
Israel. They suffered multiple piercings because
of their trust in false powers and impotent
protection. These piercings were the results - not
the signs - of Israel's rebellion against God, of
their refusal to believe in the invisible Lord of
Hosts, the God of the armies, to deliver them.
Maybe you like piercing your body as a statement.
More pierce their souls when they depend upon
material things to hold them up. I want to be
careful to avoid such a piercing.
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