I was only doing my job,
As my grandfather and father had done before me.
They taught me all I know.
Money-changers and sellers of livestock for sacrifice,
that was our trade.
That was what the worshippers needed and
indeed expected of us.
Well, we may not have given them
a fair exchange for their money,
but everyone did it, not just our family.
Getting a bit extra where we could, they would never know.
Then it happened.
I was just sitting there when
he came into the courtyard .
He headed straight for my table.
The next thing I knew
my table was overturned.
Coins rolling across the
floor into every nook and cranny
Cages were flung open, doves
and pigeons flying free,
It was chaos
And he said
‘My house shall be called a
house of prayer
but you have made it a den of thieves‘
He looked straight at me.
I was only doing my job, or
was I ?
For the first time in my life
I felt maybe I wasn't doing what was expected of me.
But he was.
He was doing his Father's
will
In his Father's house.
That encounter changed my
life in more ways than one ,
Not only my life, but the lives
of many.
In fact he changed the world
.
© Sue Chew. March 2017
Sue is a self supporting minister in the parishes of St Andrew Haughton le Skerne Darlington and St Andrew Sadberge in the diocese of Durham. Sue says
'I enjoy writing creatively to bring a different dimension especially to the more familiar Bible passages and have an interest in drawing on the multi-sensory together with symbolic actions where appropriate to engage in worship.'