God is in This Story

If you’re like me, there are certain books of the Bible that are more difficult to read than others. I truly believe that God gave us every part of His word for good reason. I do sometimes wonder if one of those reasons is to teach us endurance or long-suffering. 

One of the most difficult chapters for me to read is Leviticus. It has always been kind of like college algebra for me. I knew I needed it in order to graduate but I couldn’t see how it applied to my life; I’m not good at math so I put off taking it as long as possible. It is the same with Leviticus…I put off reading it because it was hard to understand and didn’t really seem to apply to me.

Recently, however, Leviticus came alive for me in a way I never thought possible. Around Thanksgiving last year, my youngest son came home from school with a very itchy head. I looked and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so I didn’t think anything more of it. While we were visiting our daughter for Thanksgiving, the itching got worse. I still couldn’t see anything other than hair and scalp. My daughter did a “deeper dive” and, with the help of a flashlight and a comb, found a tiny little black speck. Now I’ve been a parent for almost 35 years, but never had something like this happened. We’ve dealt with pink eye, broken bones, seizures, surgeries, flu, asthma, croup…you probably get the idea. One of the only things that we hadn’t dealt with was head lice. Could that be what we weren’t seeing? 

When we got back home, we sent our little guy back to school, still not seeing anything unusual. Near the end of the day, I got a call from the school nurse – she told us that our guy was scratching his head almost constantly, and that she had found one of the evil little nits. She sent B home with a gift bag (seriously) full of combs, shampoo, packets of olive oil and a couple of instruction sheets. (Is reading this making your head itchy?)

So, for the first time in over 34 years, we began our education in head lice. For being such tiny little pests, head lice are difficult to treat and get rid of. One of the first things we did was “quarantine” any items that he had used since the symptoms started. Stuffed animals and toys had to be cleaned and tied into plastic bags for 2 weeks. The same with our sofa pillows, throws and anything else he used outside of his own room. We laundered bedding and thing, hoping for the best possible outcome. 

The next step was to use the special shampoo that came from the school. Following that, we blow-dried his hair and then applied the olive oil treatment. It was seriously a packet of olive oil that we spread all through his hair. This was right before bed, so he went to sleep with his head on a towel (we failed to see the part where it said to wrap up his hair in a bandana or shower cap. Oops. When he got up the next day, we went over his hair with a fine-tooth comb. We combed small sections, wiped the comb on a white paper towel to see what we were combing out. We repeated this process according to directions for a couple weeks. It was time consuming and required patience on our part and on our son’s. Even though head lice are relatively harmless, aside from being itchy, they require some specific steps and a lot of time to be free of them. 

So, what does this have to do with Leviticus? As I said earlier, Leviticus, and a few other Old Testament books, cause me to struggle a bit. So many rituals and rules make my head spin. Laws for different types of offerings. Rules for consecration. Guidelines for what is to be considered clean vs. unclean. There are two whole chapters about leprosy and one about bodily discharge. The chapters read  like the instructions for getting rid of lice. We had to send some of our belongings “outside the camp” until they were “purified”. We had to practice cleaning and combing rituals and even “annoint” our son’s head with oil. And our son had to visit the school nurse to be pronounced clean before he could rejoin his class. It was a lot – it took time and patience and some work to get him back to a place where he could be a part of the group again.

Do these old rules and rituals have anything to do with the “modern” Christian? Yes! And not because we still have to make animal sacrifices or go through purification rituals or make different types of offerings with different laws for each. They have everything to do with modern Christianity because Jesus took the place of all of them. Because God sacrificed His son, we are free from old laws and sacrifices. The blood of Jesus cleanses us and takes the place of purification rituals.

It would be great if there was a one-step cure for head lice. It would have made things easier for our family and I’m sure there are school nurses all over the world who would love a quick fix. But I’m also grateful for all of the steps we had to go through, because it reminded me of Leviticuss, and what could have been had Jesus not given His all for us.