How to Start and End the Day

How to Start and End the Day
EXODUS 29: 38- 30: 37

When my wife died, we “celebrated” her life and marked her death at a memorial service where we burnt lots of incense, not something we regularly do in our church. One striking aspect of the burning of incense is the smell, which is a bit pungent if you are not used to it. Another is the sight of the little clouds of smoke hovering about. Burning incense was a prominent feature of Israelite worship, though the Old Testament never explains why this is so. The New Testament associates incense with prayer: Revelation 5:8 and 8:3–4 picture “living creatures,” elders, and an angel offering incense along with the prayers of God’s people, so that the smoke wafting upwards suggests their prayers rising up to God, mingled with their praises. I loved the idea that our praises for my wife and our prayers for ourselves—my prayer for myself and my family—in the context of our loss and sadness were rising up to God as certainly as the incense was wafting around the church. It fits with this that Luke 1:10–13 describes Zechariah as a priest making the incense offering when it was his turn, because he is then told that his prayer has been answered (his prayer for Israel’s deliverance and his prayer that he and his wife might have the baby for whom they have longed for many years)...