The king said to me (the queen also was sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a date. [Nehemiah 2:6 (NSRV)]
“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” is what’s known as Parkinson’s Law. Writing those words in 1955, Parkinson wasn’t talking about deadlines; he was taking aim at the British Civil Service and government bureaucracies that become less efficient as they increase in size. Nevertheless, later studies have shown that without strict time constraints, we tend to waste time and work takes longer than necessary to complete.
When this pandemic began, all sorts of obligations were cleared from my calendar and, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, I was sure lots of writing would get done. How wrong I was! Like others who found themselves with excess time and no deadlines or sense of urgency, instead of getting more done, I’m accomplishing less.
When Jerusalem fell to Babylon, the Temple was destroyed and the city left in shambles. After Zerubabbel led the first group of exiles back, it took twenty years to rebuild the Temple. Seventy years after its completion, however, the city walls were still in ruins. When Nehemiah asked King Artaxerxes permission to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, the King asked how long he would be gone. Given Nehemiah’s weighty responsibilities in court, it’s logical to assume that the king would not agree to a lengthy absence. As the king’s cup-bearer, Nehemiah’s presence was essential to the king. His duties included being the chief financial officer and bearer of his signet ring. As the king’s wine taster, his job was to sample royal beverages to test for poison.
Before making his request, Nehemiah must have carefully considered both the amount of time necessary for such a task and the length of time the king would allow his absence. Although we don’t know Nehemiah’s answer, the king found it reasonable and the men agreed upon a time frame. With no target date, the wall hadn’t been repaired in over ninety years; with a deadline, the project was completed in a record 52 days!
Although Scripture mentions Nehemiah returning to Babylon twelve years later, it’s difficult to think the king would have agreed to be without his cup-bearer for that length of time. It’s more likely that a specific deadline, perhaps as brief as two months, had been set and Nehemiah returned promptly after the wall’s completion. Having shown his excellent leadership qualities, it probably was then that Artaxerxes appointed Nehemiah Judah’s governor and sent him back to Jerusalem. If the King originally had agreed to a twelve year absence, I suspect the wall may have taken nearly that long to complete!
Deadlines motivate us; they keep us from growing lethargic or unconcerned. Let us never forget that we all live with two deadlines: our own personal expiration date and the world’s. Although we know that both cutoff dates will occur, we don’t know when. Let us never grow lax and apathetic or lose a sense of urgency about doing the Lord’s work. Viewing every day as a gift, we must use our time wisely and enthusiastically to glorify God and bring about His Kingdom. Let us live this day to the fullest as if it were our last. After all, it very well could be!
In an article about how our post-pandemic new normal will evolve, the author suggested a process for businesses to identify what needs changing in their post COVID-19 world. As a way of illustrating their method, there was an aerial photograph of a college campus quad. Before designing the walkways for this large green area surrounded on four sides by university buildings, the landscape architects simply sodded the field and observed how the students used the grassy expanse. After a while, the beaten down grass indicated the students’ preferred traffic patterns and it was on those favored paths that they finally placed paved walkways. At first glance, the asymmetric sidewalks seemed random but, once the process was explained, the strange arrangement of paths made sense. It was easy to see how they accommodated people’s tendency to take shortcuts and cut across corners.
Although God passed along some very detailed commands, the people of Israel frequently refused to obey them and, in Judges 17-18, we see what happens when people do whatever seems right in their own eyes. After stealing 1,100 pieces of silver from his mother, Micah hears her curse the thief. Fearful of her curse, he confesses and returns the money. After blessing Micah to remove the curse, his mother dedicates the money to the Lord. In honor of her thieving son, however, she gives 200 of those coins to a silversmith for the fashioning of an image (a figure carved from wood overlaid with silver) and an idol (a figure cast from molten silver). Micah then sets up a shrine for the prohibited items, adds some household idols of his own, makes an ephod (a priestly garment), and installs his son as his own personal priest. This was wrong in so many ways: not only were people expressly forbidden from making either carved images or molten idols but only a Levite could serve as a priest!
Unlike some laws, the Ten Commandments actually were set in stone; nevertheless, in a 2010 article in Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens posited that they were just a work in progress and badly needed a rewrite. Hitchens, who called himself an anti-theist rather than an atheist, had no use for the first three commandments. Getting out his hammer and chisel, he proposed getting rid of them altogether, revising others and adding a few more. While I didn’t agree with Hitchens’ misleading arguments, they caused me to consider the relevance of these laws that were given to an ancient nomadic tribe some 3,500 years ago.
Yesterday I told about a friend who was reading her Bible in a coffee shop when a young Jewish man belittled her belief in God. Admitting that he once believed, he explained he no longer did because the Torah had too many laws. My friend was pleased when the Holy Spirit provided her with this simple response: “Try the New Testament; there are only two laws in it!”
A friend told of reading her Bible in a coffee shop when a stranger came up and made a disparaging comment about her belief in God and Scripture. Identifying himself as Jewish, he said he no longer believed the Bible, adding “There are just too many laws in the Torah.” Observant Jews have even more than the 613 laws found in Scripture. The words of Exodus 24:12 were construed to mean that, along with the written commands in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, God gave Moses additional explanations and examples that he was to teach. Believing these oral explanations were passed from Moses to Joshua and on down to the following generations, Deuteronomy 17:8-11 was understood to mean that, along with declaring verdicts in disputes, the priests or sages could further clarify and interpret the law.
Devotions of the Heart 