Our worship gathering on Sunday will focus on the story of the golden calf found in Exodus 32.1-14. So the Relate gang thought it would be cool to have a golden calf to display on Sunday. We checked with import stores, craft stores, garden statuary stores and more, and couldn’t find an acceptable calf for less than $1,000. And even at that we would have to paint it gold ourselves! So the bad news is we won’t have a golden calf statue on Sunday.
Something tells me, however, that we don’t really need a statue. We tend to carry a good many golden calves around with us much of the time. That is to say, we tend to create our own gods to worship. Our golden calf 
may be created by addiction, greed, fear, or the effort to avoid the God whose worship requires self sacrifice; but for whatever reason, we offer up our worship and devotion to our custom created god instead of remaining faithful to God.
On Sunday we will take time to identify our personal golden calf, and seek together to discern how to put it aside. Between now and then, we invite you to reflect on the following prayer:
O God, our golden calf has an insatiable appetite. “Bring me all your ornaments,” it demands; “Bring me everything that glitters.” We thought the golden calf was dead, or the invention of ancient story tellers. We thought the golden calf was gone for good. But no – like a stubborn pest that will not go away, like shame, like desire, it gores our spirits still, demanding to be fed. We know it’s audacious to ask for your help God; after all, we ourselves have created our calf. But we do ask God, because we know that only your grace, only your compassion can save us from our own greed; can set us on a right path; can transform our spirit and make us anew. Spirit of God whom we adore, melt and mold us anew as we offer our praise. Amen
