Give Aaron and his sons this command: 'These are the regulations for the burnt offering: The burnt offering is to remain on the altar hearth throughout the night, till morning, and the fire must be kept burning on the altar. – Leviticus 6:9

Today's Scripture Reading (December 17, 2024): Leviticus 6

I live in a fast-food world. Today, I went with a friend to McDonalds for lunch. We walked in, gave the cashier our order, and then waited for our food. This McDonald's has a number system, and the number is put up on the screen, telling you if the order is in process or ready to be picked up. My friend went and found a seat, and I waited for our order to make the move from being in process to being ready to be picked up. And I waited and waited. Then I looked up and noticed that my order number had disappeared from the "in process" screen, but it wasn't on the "Ready for pickup" screen either. It was just gone. I started to believe that our order had gone to some kind of "fast-food purgatory." I was just about to go to the counter to ask about the order when I heard my number called. The number still hadn't reappeared on either side of the screen, but the food was ready. It took a little longer to get the food, but all that was passed. I took the food, sat down with my friend, and we ate our lunch.

I live in a fast-food world. And sometimes, we seem to want our faith to be fast, too, except that it isn't. Faith takes time. It isn't a matter of saying a prayer and then we have arrived. We need the time to grow into our faith. I firmly believe that Christianity is a decision that starts a process. There is no way to find a shortcut through the process portion of the journey. We decide to follow Christ, but then, every day, we have to move toward him, learning to do things the way he would have us do it. It takes a while, with many stops and restarts as we follow that process. But part of the process is that we need to feed the fire of our faith, keeping that fire alive. And we do that by gathering with other Christians and keeping ourselves buried in the Bible. 

The regulation for the burnt sacrifice is that it was supposed to be kept burning overnight. The concept was that the priests would tend the fire all night, keeping the fire burning, and little by little, the burnt sacrifice was fed to the fire. It was not a quick process. But slowly, the sacrifice was consumed by the fire. 

As I live my Christian life, what I want most is that, little by little, my life is consumed, and the character of Christ is placed inside of me. I desire that the fire God has placed in me will never die down or go out. Adam Clarke (1762-1832) asks this question. "Does the perpetual fire burn on the altar of thy heart? Art thou ever looking unto Jesus, and beholding, by faith, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" (Adam Clarke, Commentary on Leviticus)? I want to make sure my answer to Clarke is an unqualified yes. 

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Leviticus 7