Issue 241
Based on Deuteronomy 19:1-7
Imagine going into the countryside with a friend, to chop some wood for a nice log fire in the cabin where you are staying. You swing the axe and the head flies off, hits your friend on the head and kills him. You were going about a normal activity and, through no fault of your own, a disaster has happened.
The situation may not be as dramatic, but every day of the working week we make honest mistakes and variable degrees of disaster follow.
Your weapon may be a word, an action, or a strategy, but the unforeseen, unintended, accidental consequence is the same. Hurt, pain and maybe even a desire for revenge may follow.
Perfectionists, of course, find it very difficult to admit to the accidental mistake. The perfectionist does not believe in mistakes.
There is a type of perfectionist culture, which also doesn’t believe in accidental mistakes. If an error has occurred, someone is to blame, someone is responsible, and someone should pay. So scenarios can develop in which you are in real danger of losing your health, your well-being, your job or your livelihood simply by making an honest, accidental, unintentional mistake. Even if no one is after your blood, your own conscience may become extremely accusatory.
When God was setting up a civilised society with his freed slaves he told them to configure the geography in such a way as to provide places of safety, called cities of refuge. He commanded them to build roads to these places of safety to that they were accessible and hospitable.
So here is a vital spiritual principle:because you cannot help making all kinds of accidental mistakes in your life and work, and because they take their toll on your soul, you will need to build roads to places of safety. These roads will not build themselves. They also need to be of a realistic length so they are not too difficult to travel and the place too far away. there also need to be several of them.
So where are your roads to safety? For some of you, you just need to build a road to a day off. One of the follies of Sunday trading is the tendency to avoid rest, and overwork. For others of you, you need to build a road to regular family meals. Your diary has become so crowded that you hardly eat with those you love.
I have benefited from kind friends who have let me travel roads to their places of rest and retreat. Maybe you should, if you can afford it, build a road to one of your own and share it with others. If you cannot afford it, maybe seek a place to go to rest and recover.
Perhaps you need to build a road to a regular holiday, or even a daily break, or a proper lunch. Again, you may need to build a road to a counsellor, friend, mentor, or coach, or just to your hobby, which you have forgotten to pursue.
Life is full of accidental, energy sapping, unintentional mistakes. Life doesn’t have to be empty of places to go to recover. To disobey the command to build this road is a deliberate mistake and will result in nowhere to hide. Better to build than fall apart. Better to run than wait for your head to get chopped off!
Deuteronomy 19:1-7
1 When the LORD your God has destroyed the nations whose land he is giving you, and when you have driven them out and settled in their towns and houses, 2 then set aside for yourselves three cities centrally located in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess. 3 Build roads to them and divide into three parts the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, so that anyone who kills a man may flee there. 4 This is the rule concerning the man who kills another and flees there to save his life—one who kills his neighbor unintentionally, without malice aforethought. 5 For instance, a man may go into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and as he swings his ax to fell a tree, the head may fly off and hit his neighbor and kill him. That man may flee to one of these cities and save his life. 6 Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue him in a rage, overtake him if the distance is too great, and kill him even though he is not deserving of death, since he did it to his neighbor without malice aforethought. 7 This is why I command you to set aside for yourselves three cities.
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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