Tuesday, June 1, 2021

The Offering of Love

 

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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