As the two-plus year pandemic wanes, many are wondering about getting back to normal. We look back on the past, what we once had or did with nostalgia and imagine it better than it actually was. So, we once again start to yearn for exotic places, long-haul flights, and place names that evoke romance and adventure. Others yearn to welcome back the familiarity of protests, riots, and poverty marches that give their lives a sense of purpose.

The newly freed Israelites also faced this longing for the familiar as they gathered around Mount Sinai, waiting for their beloved leader Moses to descend. Although the Lord had been revealing to Moses how Israel should worship, the Bible records a shameful story of worship gone amuck.  As Moses was on Mt. Sinai for an extended time, the Israelites asked Aaron to “make gods” to lead them. Aaron complied with this request, gathering gold from the people and moulding a calf-like image, mounting it on an altar so the people could offer sacrifices and celebrate feasting, drinking, and “pagan revelry” (Exodus 32:1-6).

In violating the second commandment, the Israelites were re-shaping their relationship with God in light of that which was familiar to them, namely, idolatry and revelry. They wanted to worship the LORD through means of a visual symbol that might well have been used for worship in Egypt or other pagan nations in the Ancient Near East. This is why Aaron could describe their pagan celebration as “a festival to the LORD” (Exodus 32:5).

As I begin to reflect upon this sad story in Exodus 32, I find it easy to turn up my nose at the Israelites, thinking of them as idolatrous and even foolish. But then I think of how we often do the same thing in our walk of faith. The old life we left and its temptations lure us and invite us back and sometimes we succumb. We forget that the lure of the familiar is powerful, a deadly thief, robbing us of our new life in Christ of its grace, joy, and victory.

God’s people must not fall prey to the same thing. the same thing. Paul asks in Galatians 4:9, “But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?” Our answer must be that we won’t do that. We won’t go back and mix idolatry with the worship of the true God like Israel of old did. We must not go back to old religious views that say we can earn our salvation based on the righteous works that we do. Why, because “all our righteousness is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).”

Very soon life as we know will become very unfamiliar for good. There will be strife, pestilences, persecution and a time of trouble such as never has been since there was a nation till that time” (Daniel 12:1). Nothing will be as we remember it to be. Are you ready for this time? As trouble approaches let’s get ready because it’s but a prelude to the future joy in heaven that is beyond our wildest imagination.