You shall not make for yourself an image.
Here are some vacation tips: The next time you’re traveling through Middleton, Wisconsin, you might want to visit the National Mustard Museum. For those of us who feel that one mustard is plenty, this place amazes, featuring 6,090 different mustards from around the world. In McLean, Texas, you might be surprised to run across the Barbed Wire Museum—or more surprised there is such a passion for, well . . . fencing.
It’s telling what kinds of things we choose to make important. One writer says you could do worse than spend an afternoon at the Banana Museum (though we beg to differ).
We laugh in fun, yet it’s sobering to admit we maintain our own museums—places of the heart where we celebrate certain idols of our own making. God instructs us, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3) and “You shall not bow down to them or worship them” (v. 5). But we do anyway, creating our own graven gods, perhaps of wealth or lust or success—or of some other fill-in-the-blank “treasure” we worship in secret.
It’s easy to read this passage and miss the point. Yes, God holds us accountable for the museums of sin we create. But He also speaks of “showing love to a thousand generations of those who love [Him]” (v. 6). He knows how trivial our “museums” really are. He knows our true satisfaction lies only in our love for Him.
By: Kenneth Petersen
Kenneth Petersen
A graduate of Wheaton College, Ken Petersen is a veteran of Christian publishing, starting his career with Tyndale House Publishers as editor, eventually becoming managing editor and executive director. In 2007, Ken moved to WaterBrook, the Random House evangelical imprint, and headed up the editorial team there for eight years. In 2015, Ken became publisher and VP at Our Daily Bread Ministries in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Ken is also an author, having written more than a dozen books, including devotional works and memoir collaborations with notable athletes, Tamika Catchings and Benjamin Watson.
In December 2020, Ken decided to pursue writing full-time and is now working on his first novel.