Do Not Leave Your Post!

Eccl.10:4

Wolde-Tinsae

Hello!! How are you doing with the fast? Earnestly, I hope that the season is bringing you even closer to the Lord Christ whom we have been able to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste thanks to His becoming one of us through His mystery of Salvation.

As we hold this memorial fast, it gives us the opportunity to see the stature we have got through the Blood of Christ vis-à-vis those, the just and the unjust alike, who lived during the Age of Condemnation.

We are a ransomed stock. The ransom we revere is not one found or achieved through an ordinary sacrifice. It rather is a heavenly one. After years of longing, after hundreds and even thousands of years of prophecy, that Age of Salvation has come through Christ. If we are in Christ, we can understand how holy, how high, etc. our post in faith is. It is in this context of the New Testament that we have to understand what leaving/not leaving one’s post means. The full verse which you read at  eccl.4:5 reads thus: If the spirit of  the ruler rises against you, do not leave your post for conciliation pacifies great offences. [Emphasis added].

Solomon, the preacher who has authored Ecclesiastes, tells us throughout this book how vain this world is . Wealth, authority and all other glitters under the sun are vain to the preacher. Having told us at length in twelve chapters how vain the world is, he concludes his observation  concluding God’s favor. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing whether good or evil,” the preacher wraps up. Eccl.12:13-14.

For us to live up to God, the preacher has told us the do’s and the don’ts. “Do not leave your post” the preacher advises as part and parcel of his message. What is a post? What does leaving it mean? What happens if one leaves it? What is the reward for maintaining it? These are possibly some of the questions we need to raise in our efforts to decipher the Christian meaning the verse could carry.

Solomon’s word is more relevant to those of us who have resorted fully to the world looking down upon the source of the promised eternal hope. The preacher has passed through both lives and he is indeed well-placed to give us a lesson. In God, he was extolled to the highest level of grace and wisdom. Yet, leaving his post, he happened to be filthy to the extent of worshipping an idol.

As a character of contradictions, Solomon was wise to the extent of pleasing the Lord. As he sits on his father’s throne with the will of the Lord, Solomon never prayed for a military might or immense riches or whatever. Rather, he asked for a different thing; he asked for something  priceless; he asked for wisdom. “Give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil,” he asked God. 1kings 6-9. Thanks to His wisdom, Solomon was a man of wise judgment Of  the many things of wisdom he did, he has judged a broken-hearted mother whose child was snatched due only to a flagrant Jeleousy. 1 kings 3:16-20. He was also a man of proverbs and songs. 1kings 4:32.

Despite all this gift of God which put him above all mankind, despite the wish many had to listen to his words of wisdom, Solomon falls. The man at the uppermost rug of wisdom throws himself down to vanity. He turns out to be filthy in the eyes of God when he trivializes his divine gift. The king of Israel marries an infidel. 1king 11:1-3. David’s son worships idols. 1 king 11:4-8.  The wise man enslaves his own people. 1 kings 12:1-4. All this happened against the background of  his wisdom.

Well, as time passes, Solomon came back to his sense. He denounced the risk of leaving one’s holy post. “Then, I looked on the works that my hands had done, and on the labour in which I had toiled, and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind,” he laments. He puts his vane life against the background of his God-given wisdom and concludes in unequivocal terms that the latter is the one man shall crave for. “Then, I turned myself to consider wisdom and madness and folly;. . .  I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool man walks in darkness,” Solomon confesses. Eccl.2:10-16.

If leaving one’s post is this awful, where exactly is our post? Knowing where our post lies helps us to preserve it and get the due glory be it in  the eyes of men or God. There are posts we come to assume naturally, as heirs, through training and service, etc.

In God, we have a post which we are expected to preserve with utmost reverence. Having created man in his own like or fashion, God placed him in the Garden of Aden. Gen.2:15. Man was created to be anew for eternity; he was entitled to take care of the garden; he was destined to be so angelic in his pre-occupation of Thanks Giving; etc. In a word, man was created to live for the heavenly will, checking the needs of the flesh and was never fated to be mortal. Gen.3:10. Despite this, man has opted for failure. Man, though created in and for honour, he behaved like the beasts that perish. Ps.49:12. He became a victim of the satanic trap in his ill-will to assume divinity only to lose the comforts of Aden.ps.23:2. In his trespass, he built a wall between himself and his God.

The lesson we draw from Adam, our father, is that when we leave the post God has bestowed upon us , we distance ourselves from God. Up until we win the glory of paradise, we may be confronted with harsh temptations of secular will which Solomon the preacher has metaphorically called “ the spirit of the Ruler.” To win over the cheat and conclude our race successfully, “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him edured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Heb.12:1-2. It is to reinstitute us to the glory we have tramped that God the incarnate underwent His untold mystery as one of us. Thus, “He loved to reinstitute Adam to his original place,” Said St. Ephrem   the Syrian in his praise accorded to St. Mary for us to pray it daily. This place is made at the disposal of everyone of us through the Mystery of Baptism about which John the Baptist has clearly spoken. He has made his clarion call for all of us “to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Mat.3:1-3. We are chosen to be God’s Children through Baptism which in turn emanates from faith. It is through faith that we secure the place of comfort we were created for, i.e, the heaven. Through faith, Adam has got his hope fulfilled; Abraham has moved from caraan to canaan; Noah has built his ark of salvation; Job has been healed from his painful boils; prophets have foretold the future; apostels have changed the world; postapostolic mothers and fathers have forsaken the world and borne its cruel atonements; etc. Thus, it is worthy of us to remain loyal to this post without leaving it in favour of other walks of life which ultimately are detrimental though they might have glitters to offer for ephemeral consumption. Long, long ago, the prophet has advised us to “stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old path where the good way is and walk in it to find rest for [our] souls,” and in so doing we divorce ourselves form those who said, “we will not walk in it.” Jr.6:16. This post we have to ask for, and stay in for ever is the faith of our fathers, the old and impeccable path.

Not leaving one’s post means living in and according to Christianity. To just claim that we are Christians without the due life amounts to claiming the status of Abraham’s children when we are alien to his deeds. And, such a void claim has been condemned by the lord Christ. Jn.8:39.

Faith is the noblest possession we have. Imagine how much we deserve to pay for it to win rest for our souls as Jermiah has said. Satan’s temptations of any form-the ultimatum of the infidel, monetary snares, sufferings, lures of heresy, etc-should not unseat us from our post in faith. Patiently, we have to wait for the heavenly reward tolerating the torrents of the world. St. Paul has told us how much we may suffer to be branded as heroes and heroines of the faith. Under the Sun, we need to confront the torture, the trial of  mockings and scourgings, the stoning, the saw and the sword, the destitution and wandering, . . . you name it! Heb. 11:35-37.

Remember Naboth. He was murdered for he refused to leave his anscestoral post. 1 kings 21:1 25. If a man dies for a fertile vineyard, how noble is it to die for our faith? How noble is it not to leave our heavenly post? It is through faith that we putrify in a grave to rise in glory.

Let us learn from the demise of Satan, the trend-setter of failure, and others, such as Ares, who given their spiritual journey a notorious ending due to heresy. Let us rather open our hearts better to the glorious life. There are voices to heed. Let us live in and sing to the glory of the house of God which David and Jacob have extolled. This is the post we should never leave as it is the only doorway to glory. There, Solomon the wise and New Testamental apostles have rested their hearts. Ps.132:5; Gen.28:16; Acts.2:1-4; 1Kings.9:3. How glorious a house it is! St.Paul has dozens of captivating names for this house. The church of God /1cor.1:2/, the bride of Christ /eph.5:22-32/, Mount Zion /Heb.12:22/,. . .  All these names refer to the church where we have to gather as one sharing a common destiny. In fact, as the day comes closer, we have to do this even more vigorously. Heb.10:25.

At the chosen abode of God, at the church, God and us meet. We as Noahs have it as our Ark, not just to spare us from a flood which could shortlive our worldly existence. It is much, much more. We are redeemed from the snare which denies the heaven. Our stay in the church, our only post, might feel coarse. If Noah’s Ark was uncomfortable, where else could have Noah, et. al. gone? It is, in the final analysis, the only post which the Gates of Hades could not shake. Let us not leave our post. Amen!!

May God Bless us, Amen.