Elul 20 :: What is the Enemy of Your Best?

A new twist on the old story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife... anyone who was raised going to Sabbath school or Sunday school as a child is very familiar with the tale of the Hebrew slave in the Egyptian household who was pestered continually by his master's wife until he finally had to flee from her, and subsequently found himself landed in prison for 11-14 years - thank you very much.

We tend not to think of the distractions and temptations in our own lives as being of the same caliber as the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar's wife... but today's Elul devotional has challenged me to do just that. Our own "little white lie" or a self-indulgent temper tantrum when things don't go as planned can seem petty in comparison to a story of adultery or betrayal. But I wonder if maybe that is because we misunderstand the word "petty" to mean "inconsequential" - when, in reality, it just means "little." And even with that, we also forget that YHVH doesn't grade our sins on a bell curve. I kind of imagine He has two boxes: HOLY and PROFANE. And lest we also misunderstand the meaning of the word "holy" because it conjures up the image of feathery angels flying around with harps on clouds, it simply means "set apart."

So, with that in mind, today's challenge is to think of those people or things that are calling and tempting us to anything other than our destiny to become that person YHVH has called us to be as what they really are: distractions, temptations, seductions.  It could be a drug, it could be a habit, it could be more busy work for a religious organization that is taking our focus off of the bigger picture and our higher calling. 

I like the way Oswald Chambers worded it: "The good is always the enemy of the best."