Periodically I go to a nail salon in our local mall. After I had been there a couple of times, I noticed a little “scene” in the front window. A large Buddha is sitting there. I noticed some items in front of him on the floor but couldn’t figure out what they were.

Then one day I was there when they first opened, and one of the managers was coming from the back of the salon, carefully balancing a bowl of water in one hand and some kind of food in the other. I asked the woman doing my nails what he was carrying. She kind of shrugged and said he does that every day.

So that is how I picture an idol. An inanimate object that people of some religions revere and even worship (and that can do nothing for them!).

It reminds me of the story in the Bible when Moses was up on the mountain recording the Ten Commandments as God gave them to him. When he returned to the Israelites at the bottom of the mountain, he found them worshiping a heap of jewelry they had melted.

Ridiculous, huh?

What do you worship? Is there anything that interferes with your worship of God?

I’ve heard that if we want to know what we worship or idolize, we can look in our checkbooks. What do we spend money on? Do you have any “idols” you give a lot of time/money to?

It’s something we all struggle with to varying degrees. But God wants us to worship Him alone. The Bible tells us this many times, but here are a couple of the verses.

Exodus 20:3 — “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Matthew 4:10 — Then Jesus said to him, ” . . . For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'”

By the way, yesterday I walked by the salon and there was a bowl of fresh mangoes in front of the Buddha. Hmmm . . .