Tuesday,
June 1, 2021
The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to bring me their sacred offerings. Accept the contributions from all whose hearts are moved to offer them. Here is a list of sacred offerings you may accept from them: gold, silver, and bronze; blue, purple, and scarlet thread; fine linen and goat hair for cloth; tanned ram skins and fine goatskin leather; acacia wood; olive oil for the lamps; spices for the anointing oil and the fragrant incense; onyx stones, and other gemstones to be set in the ephod and the priest’s chestpiece. “Have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them. You must build this Tabernacle and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you. Exodus 25:1-9
It strikes me as odd that some people never seem
to get it just how important it is to make our offerings to God sacred. I know there are those who have been disabused
by huckster-type (so-called) preachers.
When someone spends the lion’s share of time building the bank account
we ought to be suspicious at least. But
God’s own holy word tells us that God wants offerings from the heart.
The one picture in my mind is the ring I gave to
Elizabeth when we got engaged. By any
stretch that ring was not from Tiffany’s; he didn’t go to Jarod’s. But, for an eighteen year old, whose only job
prospect was the draft notice he’d recently gotten, it was way more than he
could afford. And yet, I was so excited
to put this ring on her finger I could barely keep the secret long enough to
get down on one knee. It was an offering
of the deepest love I knew how to express.
And that is sacred.
A brief look at the list of suitable gifts for
God’s temple in today’s Scripture is all you need to understand just how
seriously God takes this.
I learned a term for a non-sacred offering from a
friend many years ago; missionary tea bags. It seems there were some skinflints in the
church of her youth. Some of the ladies
made a practice of saving their used tea bags to send to those poor
missionaries. Somehow it never occurred
to them that, perhaps, the sacrifice of using their own tea bags two or three
times, so they could afford to buy new packages of tea to send to the
missionaries, would move tea bags into the sacred range. The point is not missed here; anytime you
give God second best (or worse), you’re acting like that’s what He deserves.
For You Today
Offering
less than your best is no way to propose marriage, do a day’s work, or raise a
child. It certainly doesn’t come into
acceptable range in Heaven, when you give less than your best to a God who gave
you the very best of what He had, Jesus!
That was God’s sacred offering of love to us; should we do less?
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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