Swing It!

The swing was the best playground equipment invented. It was the way Tarzan got around in the jungle. The principle of “centrifical” force, swinging from a certain point, doesn’t exist. What? How about the tether ball, the merry go round, or even the teeter totter? What about the sling David used to kill Goliath? 

As I began to write this blog, I realized how little I often know. It started when my spell check underlined the word “centrifical.” I tried to spell it several ways without success. Instead of going to Webster’s Dictionary on my shelf, I chose Google. I learned to my embarrassment that the right word is centrifugal (even the word “centripetal” comes into play). I felt a little better when I found that many people have made the same mistake. I wonder how many other words I say wrong.

Paul, in I Corinthians 8:2 says, “And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” I have a box of old sermons that I have saved over the years. I need to go through it and sort out the ones I want to keep. I know I will find that most of them need to be tossed. I wonder how people endured that stuff. At the time it seemed ok. I am reminded that Paul said that God used the foolishness of preaching to save people (1 Cor. 1:21). 

It can make a body not want to say another word. That’s not the answer. The answer is to realize that we are weak. If we talk long enough, we will show our ignorance. That is why I try to keep these posts short. Seriously, what can we know that really matters? What ought we to know?

In Exodus 33:7, Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it outside the camp. It was a terrible time in the wilderness journey. Moses came down the mount from talking with God, to find the people dancing around naked worshipping the golden calf. Aaron was even a part of it. The tabernacle that Moses put outside the camp was a shame to the people. It was a statement that God was no longer with them. 

Things have to get very bad before we finally realize that we are not where we ought to be; we don’t know what we ought to know. More clearly, we don’t know God as we ought to know Him. Moses called the tabernacle “The Tabernacle of the congregation.” People who wanted to seek the Lord could go out to it. Did they? No! Every man stood in his tent door and watched Moses and Joshua go to the tabernacle. The cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle and God talked with Moses. The people could see that God was there. However, they continued to worship from their tent door. They ought to have gone to the tabernacle.

Today we ought not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Hebrews 10:25). In these days of Covid, many have listened to man instead of God. This is nothing new. From the very beginning, the devil has tried to separate us from God. Moses returned to the camp. Joshua remained at the tabernacle. Moses missed what he ought to have known. “Who will you send with me?” he asked. Joshua had been with him all along. That was good, but not enough. God’s answer was, “My presence shall go with thee.”

Above all else we ought to know that God is with us.

As a child on the swing I loved to pump higher and higher and sing while I raced back and forth through the air, “Everybody ought to know, everybody ought to know, everybody ought to know, who Jesus is.” Friend, don’t just wing it—sing it and swing it!