Daily Lesson for February 24, 2020

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Numbers chapter 1 verses 1 through 4:

The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying: 2 Take a census of the whole congregation of Israelites, in their clans, by ancestral houses, according to the number of names, every male individually; 3 from twenty years old and upward, everyone in Israel able to go to war. You and Aaron shall enroll them, company by company. 4 A man from each tribe shall be with you, each man the head of his ancestral house.

2020 is a census year in America and a time for carrying out the Constitutional mandate to count the number of people in our communities that fair representation in governance and equitable distribution in benefits might be ordered.

As the Israelites made their way through the Wilderness the LORD also ordered a census.  Its purpose was essentially the same, to figure the overall populace and then determine representation of the people by the priests in the Holy Temple.  The census count was also the mechanism by which the Israelites determined regimental order and the various duties related to the care and protection of the Tabernacle as it traveled through the wilderness.

A census is an important undertaking.  So important, in fact, that some are willing to cheat at it for their own political purposes.  So let us be reminded that when we're talking about a census we're talking about a sacred and God-ordained thing. So its not something to be manipulated or exploited.

A people count is holy because, well, people count — all of them.

And so does God . . .