One of the characteristics of our Presbyterian Church is the yearly election of the Moderator of the General Assembly. The Presbyterian family has been electing moderators much longer than our nations have been electing presidents or prime ministers! Our General Assembly still formally elects its own moderator early in the Assembly but there has never been anyone different elected, since the present system began, other than the sole nominee determined prior by a national ballot of ministers and representative elders. So many congratulations to Rev. Karen Horst, on her election as sole nominee for Moderator of the 141st General Assembly. I have known Karen for many years and am sure she will be a gift to the church during her term as moderator. May God bless her and bless the church through her.
Another distinctive characteristic of the Reformed tradition of which Presbyterians are a part is that we think the law of God is mainly a good thing. It is sweeter than honey, a light for our feet and a lamp for our path, as the psalmist would say. Now, we do know that we are not put right by obeying the law of God or, indeed, by any achievement of our own. It is all a gift of free grace on which we lay hold by faith. And, of course, anything, including the law of God, can be misused. But at heart the law remains a blessing.
This is how it is supposed to work. If the love of God actually means anything to us, we will want also to show our gratitude to God. Grace evokes gratitude. We don’t want to sink back into a warm bath of piety and do nothing for God or for others. One way to show gratitude is to offer our praise. Another way to show that gratitude is to live a life of grateful obedience. The law of God shows us how to do just that.
I remember trying to put together a gas barbecue with my father-in-law and a very senior ministerial friend of his. I am not Mr. Fixit and the other two were, well, both have passed on and it is unseemly to speak ill of the dead. But that wasn’t the real problem. When we opened the shipping container we realized that the main problem was that the instructions were missing. (More exactly, we did have what appeared to be instructions in Chinese but since none of us could read Chinese, they were less than completely useful.) There were approximately three million moving parts in neat plastic bags in the box and if you put a gas barbecue together wrongly, the thing might blow up. We tried to put the barbecue together from first principles. Three ministers and a screwdriver. This had the makings of a bad scene from a sitcom.
After about 20 minutes we were in serious danger of doing one another injury with the hand tools when my wife burrowed into the box and found wedged under a flap… the instructions. What a gift! We now had instructions from the original equipment manufacturer showing us how to put this very complicated appliance together. The instructions from the maker were actually a blessing.
In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word that is normally translated as “Law” is “Torah.” But “Torah” could just as easily be translated as “instruction.” The “Maker” blesses us with instruction that helps us safely put together this very complicated thing called life. Instruction from the “Maker” is indeed a blessing.
