Sycamore

(Every once in a while, I look back over the last few years of writing and find something that strikes a chord with me again.  Sometimes, I feel like it’s worth passing on, and so here is a reprint of a post I wrote almost a year ago on Malachi and the way we interact with God.)

Malachi is a minor prophet, the last book in the Old Testament, and a great follow up to Monday’s post on remembering that God is real. Malachi, a prophet, says to the lukewarm nation of Israel this:

1:6 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ 7 By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the Lord’s table may be despised. 8 When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts.

I remember when I was younger, and I transferred to a new elementary school after my family moved. For some reason in 1990 there was a yo-yo craze making waves throughout the third grade, and on my first day I met a guy and subsequently broke his super sweet glow in the dark yo-yo. He, of course, demanded payment and I, of course, went home despondent and worried that my entire life was doomed to be a social failure. Plus, I was pretty certain that I hadn’t actually broken the thing, but that it was really just a difficult knot near the base. So for an entire afternoon, when I wasn’t staring at the $15 that I was supposed to give my new “friend,” I was verbally chastising him.

Of course, he wasn’t actually in the room. And as long as he wasn’t there, I decimated him and all of his petty arguments, oftentimes in front of crowds of popular students who would all embrace me afterwards and make me their king. Yet, the next morning, I handed him $15, stammered something while staring at the ground, and was so out of sorts that I barely noticed the lack of popular students giving me hugs.

I wonder sometimes if we don’t treat God the way I treated my new friend — as someone who we know is real but who we interact with as though He’s imaginary. Malachi says as much in the passage above. When the Jews had to bring an offering to God, they’d pick out some sick, pathetic lamb that wasn’t worth much and throw it on the altar. They’re going through the motions, and the discussion they’re having in their room with their imaginary God is going quite well for them. But, God says, imagine bringing that same sickly lamb to the governor’s house as a gift for a dinner party. What would that be like?

The lesson isn’t hard to find. When the real governor sees the real crappy lamb and then sees you really holding it, he’d be insulted and all of a sudden, reality would hit you — there would be real consequences in a real world. The moral of the story is that God isn’t imaginary, and that our interactions with Him can’t be lame excuses that we imagine into success stories. Just like everything went well in my head until I actually had to deal with my new friend and his broken yo-yo, everything can go quite well in our heads until we actually have to stand face to face with the Ancient of Days. And, crazier still, there’s more joy to be found by encountering God as a reality than by imagining up your own happy ending — as long as you have the blood of Christ to make you a part of His family.