The Son Becomes the Priest

The Son Becomes the Priest
Hebrews 5.4-10

A man I know inherited a business from his father. It sounds rather a grand sort of thing: the son comes in, fresh from his excellent schooling, to sit in a splendid office next to that of his father, and to take over in due course, ruling the company from above, enjoying the lifestyle of business lunches, golf outings, foreign trips, and all the rest.

It actually wasn’t a bit like that. For a start, it happened at a time of great austerity, when there wasn’t any spare cash for even the occasional lavish lunch, let alone trips and outings. What was more, the father made sure the son learned the business from the ground up. He had to work in the workshops along with hardened mechanics. He had to visit the suppliers to see where the raw materials came from, and find out for himself how hard it was to get them at the right price. He had to go out as a salesman into the suspicious world that wasn’t convinced it wanted the product in the first place. And he had to share the work of the financial department as they spent day after day crunching the complicated numbers that told the story of success or failure. Only when he had thoroughly understood every aspect of how the business worked was he even given an office of his own. And that was only the beginning. Now he would have to learn both how to lead and how to manage a workforce at a time of growing industrial unrest, as well as to represent the business in the wider world of local and national life and politics. He had to learn what it meant to be the son of his father. Nature put him in the frame for this, but a good deal of nurture was needed as well...

Taken from Hebrews for Everyone – by Tom Wright