My four year old son gave me all these great gifts for Mother’s Day one year. I particularly like the Sheriff’s badge. The marker-stained wadded up Kleenex is pretty cool, too.
I didn’t need these things. The kids know I’m in charge, even when I don’t wear my shiny new badge.
But I loved these gifts, because I love my son. Not the other way around. He couldn’t buy my love with these trinkets. Their only worth lies in the relationship we have with one another. I love to see him loving me, and his little gifts mean more to me than great riches from a stranger.
That’s the way it is with the Lord. All the time, money and sacrifice we lay on His altar mean nothing to Him unless He is our Father. We cannot buy His love with Kleenexes and badges, nor with time served on committees or money given to the poor.
The One Who owns the cattle on a thousand hills doesn’t need those trinkets from us anyway. He is the One Who bought us, at the cost of His Son’s precious life. But He delights to receive our offerings when they are the overflow of a child’s grateful heart.
Let us not work to earn the Father’s love, but instead let us thankfully serve a Father who first loved us.
“To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Mark 12:33
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