When Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the Voice addressing him from above the cover that was on top of the Ark of the Pact between the two cherubim; thus He spoke to him.
Numbers 7:89 (TANAKH)
One of the things that I am enjoying during this reading of the Old Testament is how real God seems (this is not always positive, see my post on Leviticus).
Moses takes a series of censuses because that’s what God told him to do. God speaks directly to Moses, over and over again.
I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted God to talk to me like this, to have a conversation. I have been blessed to have heard God’s voice in inaudible ways, but wouldn’t be nice if we could hear God and have an actual conversation like Moses does?
It would certainly make things easier, knowing what God thought. At the same time I am not sure that’s what this set of scriptures are getting at. I think that what’s most important here is that the people of Israel knew that God cared for the way that they lived their life together.
What would it be like if we lived our communal life as the Church in a way that said, God cares? God has a preference?
I think that if we begin to ask this question of ourselves we’ll begin to hear God’s Voice call us to order for kingdom work. And we’ll begin to live and tell our story in a way that expresses that preference.