Monday 23rd March - Responsibilities of Adulthood

DAILY BYTE

The prolific advice columnist with the pen name, Abigail Van Buren, advised once that “if you want a child to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.”

And this seems, at first glance, like sound parenting advice – the kind of advice that I feel would have come from the mouths of my own parents. Because we all do need to accept responsibility for the ways we act and the decisions we make in our lives, so it is, indeed, important to teach children to live with that reality in healthy ways.

I have been living for the past number of years in the midst of the transition time between childhood and adulthood, the time where the weight of responsibilities that were formerly parents’ or guardians’ begins to fall more heavily onto your shoulders. It is the process that everyone says is “just part of becoming an adult.” There is a job to find, housing to attain and keep, laundry to wash, leaky taps to fix, appointments to be faithful to, relationships to maintain, and the list goes on and on. And in today’s economic climate, the responsibility of paying bills can weigh especially heavily.

The more responsibilities that pile on, the more we seem to desire either to ignore them or to micromanage them. When we feel overwhelmed by everything being thrown at us, we often run away or take too much control over our lives and the lives of others. We begin to take ourselves and our role as human beings way too seriously.

When Moses was on Mount Sinai, receiving the two tablets of the covenant with the ten commandments written on them, he got a bit delayed and took longer than the Israelites thought he was going to in returning to them with his responsible leadership and the Word of God. Waiting for him to return, the people got antsy. They surrounded Aaron and demanded that he make new gods for them, since they didn’t know where Moses had gone. Aaron, feeling the heat of the crowd and the responsibility of their leadership, then took matters into his own hands. He ordered everyone to bring gold from their ears – ears with which they were supposed to be listening for God’s voice and leadership – and gathered the gold together to manage the situation and come up with a plan.

Immediately after the scriptures tell us Moses is handed the “tablets of stone, written with the finger of God,” the people of God take matters into their own hands. They take on the responsibility of God.

Make a list today of all the responsibilities that you have in your life. How do you tend to respond to these responsibilities? Do you run away? Do you allow their weight to force you to take matters into your own hands without waiting for a Word from God?

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord, we recognize that the responsibilities we are given as human beings are great. We want to be faithful to you and good stewards of the gifts we have been given. Help us, when we are overwhelmed by responsibilities, to rely not on our own leadership but on your strength and wisdom. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Exodus 32:1-3

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron.