A Shavout Table: The Ten Commandments as Our "Palette"

Shavout has led to looking anew at the Ten Commandments tonight. I love the context where it happens. As one site puts it, "During the few weeks of traveling in the desert under Divine protection, with daily miracles, such as the manna and the quail, the miraculous sweetening of the water, the defeat of Amalek, and the crossing of the Red Sea, the Jewish people had become more and more conscious of G-d. " Then the Ten Commandents are given as the Law made visible and Love made tangible...the "palette" of our covenant with God.

I just keep getting drawn to that palette image lately. At first it was with cooking and crafting, liking to work from a palette there so much. But now its more too, something about seeing something so precious as God's Law as a palette. Not one we pick and choose from of course, but one where every color on the painters palette is essential. Yet we are given a palette....and that means something. We arent expected to just paint something self generated and out of the blue, but are given a true tangible palette to paint (ie live) from. We are given this. I don't know, something about that has just really moved me. It reminds me too of science, how the basic laws of nature are so sought to be understood there. Yet with our Ten Commandments, God actually shows us these laws at a deeper level i think.... with His Law, with His Very Own Palette.

From Exodus 20:

1 And the Lord spoke all these words:

2 I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

4 Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me: 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall take the name of the Lord his God in vain.

8 Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works. 10 But on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be longlived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill.

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house: neither shalt thou desire his wife, nor his servant, nor his handmaid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his.

18 And all the people saw the voices and the flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mount smoking...

Why did i not see before what an amazing gift this was?

Also got me wondering....if there is a New Testament Palatte to go with the Old Testament Palette of the Ten Commandments, maybe it would be this...



(Images from Antelope Publishing)