Today’s Scripture Reading (August 16,
2015): Leviticus 1
Sports seems
to be filled with great one liner helps for life. If you are going to bother to
play the game, you need to make sure “that your head is in the game” and that
you are willing to “leave it all on the field.” The time has come to “bring
your best” because we all know that “there is no tomorrow.” Yes, the one liners
can be a bit trite, but the bottom line is that they are true. If you are going
to live life, why would we aim at anything less than everything – after all,
this is our one chance.
And the idea
of making the most of life is in keeping with the biblical directives. Life is
a gift that has been given to us from God, but it also comes with a bunch of
next steps. And one of the next steps is highlighted in the law that God gave
to Moses. We are to go for the best that this life has to offer, but because
life is a gift from God, we also need to remember to give the best of what we
have back to God, recognizing that he is the reason for everything that we have.
Because God has given to us, our next step is to give back to God.
There are a
couple of repeated instructions as the book of Leviticus opens. One is the idea
that the gift we are to give to God is to be from the ‘flock’ or the ‘herd.’
The point God seems to be making is that the sacrifice that you are to offer to
God is to come from what it is that you own – it is to carry a cost to the one
who is giving the gift. A wild animal that is caught and sacrificed is not a
suitable offering to God because it didn’t cost the donor anything. Maybe today
this is a little like saying “when I win the lottery, then I will give to the
work of God (and give big.)” But God’s instructions have always been that the
people called by his name are to be generous with what they have – no matter if
what they have is big – or small. We give of what we own, no matter how much we
own
But the
second repeated instruction is simply that being part of your herd or flock
(your possessions) is not enough. It must also be the best of what you have.
Offerings that are of no value to you are of no value to God. When I was a
youth pastor, people seemed to love to bring their old furniture into the
church for the youth to use. Sometimes the furniture still had some life left
in it, but often it seemed that the purpose of bringing the furniture to the
church was because it was easier to leave it there than to make a trip to the
dump. But what was often even worse was that sometimes they even wanted a tax
credit for the furniture – and we quickly adopted a policy that we would not
issue receipts for the furniture received. The giver felt that they were giving
a gift to God, but the gifts value had already been used up before it was
donated.
The bottom
line is that life has great value, and offering God a gift of no value for the
gift of life that he has given to us is simply wrong.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Leviticus 2
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