The title of the Bible Study Fellowship study for this year is The Life of Moses.  I started the fall very excited to study Moses and all through September and October, the study did not disappoint.  Also, I have loved hearing Simon and Campbell’s preschool renditions of Go Down Moses and Let My People Go. Good stuff, I’m telling you.

But somewhere before Christmas, we got past all the glorious escaping from Egypt and waded knee deep into instructions for life in the desert as you follow the one true God.  Get it?  JUST ONE!  They don’t get it.  (And neither do we.) So they need to be told over and over again, have it driven into their skulls by doing strange things like redeeming an ox from the temple with an increase in its value by a fifth.  Seriously.  So things kind of began to slow down.  Since Christmas we’ve been bogged down in Leviticus and I’m going to be honest and say that I haven’t really been that jazzed about studying, among other things, detailed sacrificial rites.

However, usually there is something to grab onto each week in the midst of the lists and the tedious instructions.  Last week we finished with the last five chapters of Leviticus.  I was all YES, Leviticus, CHECK and then I opened my new lesson and we’re starting Numbers.  Not that big of an upgrade really.  But back there in the middle of Leviticus 26 was my bit for the week.  God is listing off all of the horrific things that will happen to Israel if they disobey the laws He has given them, which of course they will do (and so will we), and sandwiched between disease, famine, war and other statements of hopelessness is this little condemnation,

Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of land yield their fruit.

There were several things about this verse that I sort of latched onto this week.  The first being that spending one’s strength in vain is actually part of the punishment.  I often live by the idea that if I just work hard enough that I can overcome or at least get through anything, so the thought of spending my strength to the point of being worn out for it to all be a waste, amounting to nothing, is so terribly sad to me.  Even worse is that I inflict this very “punishment” on myself by choosing inane pursuits as worthy of all my strength in the first place.

The other concept that stood out to me as I studied this verse is that I can be doing everything right and it still be in vain if God does not want that particular crop to flourish.  Ultimately, He is in control.  Amidst the constant media stream of the economy tanking and the growing recession, I am reminded that it is God who determines if the land will yield its fruit, if the economy will rise or fall and if I will continue or cease to live tomorrow.  I am grateful for this reminder of who’s really in control.  Because when I watch my firstborn, I realize that his attempts to rule the world are only slightly less veiled than my own.  I am a little more savvy in my control game but no less fooled into spinning myself silly.

So the idea, the tidbit for the week, the little BSF morsel would be that I can let go of vainly trying to control everything around me.  I know you’ve never heard that before.  It’s brilliant right?

Then I go to church yesterday and I remember that instead of spending my strength in vain, I could choose to listen to the words of Isaiah.

In repentance and rest is your salvation,

In quietness and trust is your strength.

All of these thoughts are of course much easier said than done, but I think I might have taken some weensy steps toward letting go as I chanted these phrases at yoga this morning.