Different & Not So Different

Make sacred garments for your brother Aaron to give him dignity and honor. . . . Have them use gold, and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, and fine linen.

—Exodus 28:2, 5

On the days that we studied Exodus, I felt myself walk through the rest of the day differently. I ate my hummus and bread and olives at lunch feeling like I was a part of something old and elemental, like eating good, fresh food made by someone’s hands was something important. It made me think about the yarn of my scarf, how someone made it with their hands, and how threads and garments and colors mattered so much when they built the ark of the covenant.

Even though a million things are different than they were then, like e-mail and Gore-Tex and Zone Bars and dishwashers, some things are not so different, like bugs and yeast and the impulse to worship. There’s still a big story, disguised as regular life, and the big story is about love, death, and God, about bread, wine, and olives, about forgiveness, hunger, and freedom. Exodus was the Wild West, lawless and risky, and it’s the cities we live in, bursting with life and meaning, and someday, when the future brings a world we can’t even imagine now, Exodus will be there, in the songs and sounds of a people who still wander and yearn for home.