[This is one in a series of mid-week Reflections published by Horley Baptist Church during October 2020]
God’s instruction to Moses “Take two tablets” has a certain resonance with many of us, albeit in a different context. Very often, it seems that the gift of healing has been delegated to the purveyors of compressed powders. Tablets to relieve pain, tablets to reduce blood pressure, tablets to rectify low blood pressure, tablets to stimulate, tablets to relax, we even have tablets to restore the equilibrium of the stomach after taking too many other tablets. Perhaps we need the tricorder and the hypospray from USS Enterprise to deliver instant cures.
After the incident when Moses dropped the first two tablets on the ground, God told Moses to keep the replacements in a box. Great idea, it keeps them safe and out of sight. But out of sight can often mean out of mind, ignored, forgotten.
For us, when we attempt to put our tablets back in their box we find the way is obstructed by a tightly folded piece of paper. Usually we just pull it out and throw it away. That leaflet is sometimes called a prospectus – it contains important information about the medicine and what we can expect from it. Have you ever bothered to read one? It tells us who made the product, what it is for, the appropriate dosage, what to avoid whilst using it and how to recognise any side-effects.
Moses received a prospectus too; you can find it in the early books of the Old Testament. It gives us important information about what was written on the tablets that he was given; who wrote them, what their purpose was, what should we do or not do and what can we expect if we follow its advice. The rest of the Old Testament shows that, for much of the time, the prospectus given by God was ignored or forgotten by those purporting to be His people.
The apostle Paul wrote about tablets. In his second letter to the Corinthians he commended them: “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” [2 Corinthians 3 v3]
Ignoring a medical prospectus can mean an uncomfortable present; ignoring God’s prospectus makes for a very uncomfortable future.
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author
