MSG Romans 12:1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Life is familiar, complicated and sometimes even confusing. I want to honor God. I want to be faithful. I want to be obedient. I want to do what’s right. I want to be a good citizen. I want to be a good wife. There’s nothing in that list I have’t failed at more than once. There are just times when I need to hear: “So here’s what I want you to do…”
As I thought about the rest of these two verses it reminded me of when our children were small [back in the olden days]. There were little handmade gifts often prompted by a teacher in school, maybe more a duty than the reality of their own hearts at the time. Sometimes they were made of pieces of crumpled tissue paper in the shape of a heart glued to construction paper and decorated with their own shaky printing. They were childish efforts meant to express some level of caring. I saved them for many years and eventually some were returned to their “all grown-up” creators. It was a way to let them know their simple gifts had been my treasures.
I think that must be how God deals with our offerings. Ordinary life offerings may feel more like duty but they are the reality of our own heart right then. They don’t have much material value but he saves them to be returned to you. Our simple gifts are the treasures God creates our blessings from.
“So here’s what I want you to do…
• If the only way you honored God this week was to swallow some critical words rather than speak them…
•if the only way you were faithful was to open your Bible first even though you didn’t really feel the inspiration…
• if you did the right thing even when it wasn’t what you really wanted to do…
• if the whole political environment makes you want to gripe more than pray…
• if after decades of marriage you’re still in a slight period of adjustment…
Those are the crumpled pieces of tissue that are the shape of your heart at this moment. Add your own shaky words of confession …”and place it before God as an offering…fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.”
That’s the blessing that will be returned to you [soorner rather than later I hope]. It’s your treasure “pressed down, shaken together, and running over” to remind you how priceless a childish gift really is to God. Amen!
Read and Ponder - Faith in Daily Life 