Before I go on, I want to comment on my previous post. Writing the post and making the subject matter personal fired me up more than a little bit. Whether that comes across in the writing I would not be able to full say. What I can say is that I see it and I want to be very careful about that. In speaking about important things, the good goal is to bring glory to God; that at the end of the conversation Christian brothers can come together and rejoice that God is so much better than we deserve and yet He loves sinners like you and me. The bad goal is to bring glory to me, to prove that I am right and very literally) damn the consequences. By God's grace, I want to pursue the former and shun the latter. I also don't want to make it any harder for any brother or sister of mine to do likewise. Christ died for you too, as it happens. I figure that means something. That said, I would like to talk about the beauty I see in God's plan that would be irreconcilable with Calvinism.
Deuteronomy 16:16-17
Three times a year all your men must appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles. No man should appear before the LORD empty-handed: Each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way the LORD your God has blessed you.
What do you get for the guy who has everything? This is not an uncommon question. The first time I recall hearing it was from an episode of Family Matters, and if it's being used in sitcoms from the 80's, you know it's commonplace. But the reason I recall that instance was that it was a Christmas episode and an angel was using it in reference of gift shopping for God. It was a quick laugh at the time but that has stuck with me all the same. It remains a pertinent question: what can I possibly give to the One who made all things.
I came across this text in my readings and it just stuck out. Let me tell you, reading through the Pentateuch has not often been the most fertile ground for me and yet this time around, things are popping up, connections are being made, for which I praise God. Ideas just get stuck in my head, this as example: no man should appear before the LORD empty-handed. And so I've been thinking about this a bit. Here's what I have.
What do you give to the God who has everything? What He asks for. For Israel that meant the Levitical system, adherence to the covenant. This was tied principally to the sacrificial system. And yet, what does David say:
Psalm 40:6-8
Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but my ears you have pierced;
burnt offerings and sin offerings
you did not require.
Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.
I desire to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart."
And again, in Psalm 51, repenting of Bathsheba:
Psalm 51:16-17
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise.
So what do you give? What do you have to give? Exactly what He gave us to give Him: a will submitted to His own. This is what Jesus patterned for us in His own life, illustrated perfectly in Gethsemane. It was not that Jesus had no options; that He could not have said no. It was that the cry of His heart to seek the will of His Father, more than His pleasure, more than His comfort, more than His life. To take away free, independent will is to take away a profoundly beautiful scene; to turn Gethsemane into an act instead of an example of precisely the relationship that our Father calls us into.
Lewis tells a story called sixpence none the richer. I will not be able to do it justice but I will sum it up: A child wants to get a present for his dad so he asks his dad for some money. The dad gives him said money, just pocket change, gets the gift and gives it to the dad. Now, as the title itself says, the father is not enriched in the slightest by the gift and yet he loves it. Why? Because he receives, through the giving of the gift, the love of his son.
I find it hard to describe how even relating that story moves me. That the God of the universe cares in the slightest what I do, let alone is active in drawing me in to a deeper relationship with Him when all I deserve is rejection, scorn, and death. That He cares about this little blog and my feeble attempts to grasp who He is. He is not enriched in the slightest and yet His glory is revealed in and through my life. And He loves it when I give Him a present that He paid for with His Son.
There is this quote from a monk whose name I can't recall. It goes something like this:
I do not know if what I do pleases You. And yet I hope that my desire to please You, pleases You.
Father, glorify Your Name!
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