- Exodus 32:1-14 (The Golden Calf)

Luther said: "Wherever your heart is there is your God."  If we were to really take this word into ourselves and place ourselves in it, then the question of the "Golden Calf" would take on  entirely new significance.  A proverb from Africa says: "The golden calf is multiplied in many forms.  The dance goes on.  Whoever refuses to join in that dance wins the prize."

Suggestions for meditating:

- First, this happening places a question before us: Is not the content for the meditation offered here a negative one on which we should not meditate?  Only after pondering long can we finally grasp that something positive is happening here - a positive movement that wants to bring us along.

- The main accent of the happening is the anger of the person...It is a reminder to us of Jesus in the Temple who had to drive out the peddlers and money changers..."had to" - this word also comes to mind for us in this picture.  What had Moses experienced in the last fourteen days with the Almighty God that made him react in this way..."holy anger", about what?...

- Moses leads us to ask: "Is it really so bad with our, with my sin?"... Perhaps with this question we can look briefly at a picture of the Crucified One.  Yes, it is really so bad and my hunch is that it is even worse...The broken tablets of God's Holy Law  are a symbol of that: when one breaks Gods Law, one violates (breaks) oneself.

- Exodus 24:18b; 32:1 ("When the people saw that Moses was gone a long time and didn't   come down from the mountain")

We put ourselves in the place of one of the men or women of the people of Israel during Moses' forty days on the mountain when he reflected on God - and wait in this dark uncertainty. We apply this to our life...

- Psalm 16:4a ("Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows")

- Mark 10:17-27 (The Rich Young Man)