Take a deep breath and smell what’s cooking…

Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:

What did I like about today’s passage?

I must admit that I always need to take a deep breath before starting this book (even if I’m not reading it out loud…) There is a ton of exacting detail, almost immeasurable fuss, it seems. These passages sum up what most people I know who don’t like God would point to when they distance themselves from religion. Haven’t we moved on from this?

At this point, I need to remember that it’s not my job to judge God! There is going to be a lot in this book that I’m glad I don’t have to do (and we’ll see Paul spell this out to Christians in his letter to the Galatians soon.) And yet I find myself wondering why God laid out all these instructions when he knew that people would break them and could not use them to earn their way into his favour in any case.

What I love about these passages is imagining how amazing it would be in the middle of all this food offering. Can you feel the heat and smell the goodness? Can you picture the amount of love and care that had to go into getting this ready? Can you sense how this isn’t just people trying to obey God, but God bonding people together with him and each other around involving, meaningful stuff? It’s not just people at work here – God is at work with them, shaping them with shared experiences, clear answers to questions about what he might want them do, and a chance to see how wrong can turn to right in life.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God wants people to know him, work and find purpose with him and, when things go wrong, know the way back to him. He knows that when we don’t feel his presence, we can easily doubt and wander away, so he set out a plan to engage people’s senses fully in the celebration of God’s fullness of power and love.

Some of the plan would not be fulfilled until Jesus became the perfect priest with the perfect sacrifice for us, but this is where God started to lay the pattern that points to him.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

I am grateful that we have simpler symbols which remind us of Jesus’ sacrifice for us in communion. Next time we share this, I am going to take a bit more time to imagine the scene of the sacrifices described here. It’s a big deal to be brought together by God to be close to him with our wrongdoing forgiven.

Who am I going to share this with?

I love when we share communion as a whole family, which I hope we’ll do soon at church. I want to chat with our son about how amazing it is to be known, loved and forgiven by God.