May 25
13No domestic can slave for two lords; for he will either hate the one and will love the other; or he will care for one and he will despise the other. You are unable to slave for God and mammon.” (Luke 16:13; The Original Gospels)
Happy Thursday Family. Well, I finally took a full day off, and I powered through the Book of Numbers earlier this morning. I was going to share some of the verses from the end of that Book, where Moses writes that God told him to instruct the Israelites to kill thousands of animals every month for normal sacrifices. According to that book, each day, every Israelite was to sacrifice two lambs, “without blemish”, one in the morning and the other at twilight. That would be hundreds of thousands of lambs just slaughtered and thrown on a fire every single day. Absolute insanity. If you want to read that yourself, open your Bible to Numbers chapter 28 and just do a quick tally of all the animals Moses commanded the Israelites to slaughter every day, week, month, and year.
I praise God every day that He sent Jesus to Earth to clarify God’s true intentions with mankind. To demonstrate that He wanted a relationship with us, not a religion of sacrificing innocent animals for complete waste. Jesus gave us clarity, crystal-clear clarity, of how to live and what God saw as the most important aspects of living a good and faithful life. Of that clarity, Jesus shares this non-negotiable truth above to all who had ears in His time, and all who have eyes to read since then: you cannot love God and love mammon (money). While this does not mean you have to live a life of poverty, it does mean that you should never live a life of excess. For all you earn, live a life of humble comfort, and then use your excess to bless others. From family in need to strangers on the street, there is always someone who could be blessed from those more fortunate. Tithe, give until it hurts, and never love money more than loving the gift of giving it away.
I had a very special day this last Sunday. The infant rooms were short volunteers and our classroom of four-to-five-year-olds had a full crew, so the Early Childhood director asked for someone to move to the infant rooms. I jumped at the chance because it meant I got to be in the room with our baby, SGZ3. We ended up with only five sweet babies in that room. While I do love teaching the four-and-five-year-olds due to being able to actually teach them about Jesus and God, I relished this beautiful morning with my baby girl. During Sunday service, they put all the infants in a table with chairs and give them Cheerios as a snack. This table only had four chairs, so I told the two adults in the room with us that I would keep SGZ3 out and feed her myself. So there I was, lying on my stomach and handing SGZ3 one Cheerio at a time while “Baby Einstein” played in the background in a cute little nursery room. I felt like I was living out of time, like that moment, when it was just SGZ3 and I, her grabbing one Cheerio at a time, dropping half of them as she attempted to place each piece in her mouth with her two little teeth, that this moment was a true gift, one that would always stay with me for the rest of my life. A moment I hope I can revisit if I make it to Heaven.
I really hope that Heaven is like the Multi-verse, where we will be able to step back into our timestream and relive some of these most precious moments, which slip through our hands like grains of sand. To me it is worth living a life of sacrifice, of humbleness, of grace, of mercy, of love, to earn a place in eternity for the sliver of a chance to be with my children one more time. It really blows my mind that not every parent feels the same way about the beautiful blessing their children are.
I must wrap this up for the day, so I can get back to those wonderful children. It’s Thursday, so tomorrow brings a new week of music releases. For today, I share Elevation Worship’s new collection of wonderful worship anthems. Click here for the album’s page. Click on the image below for my favorite of this eight-track-set. Have a wonderful day and may God Bless You All.
Common Sense Reborn 