Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, June 15, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
What does God really want? The Bible says different things in different places. But in several places—the Psalms, the prophets, etc.—it is proclaimed that God doesn’t want what most of the Jewish law says God demands. Sacrifices. Why? Because going through the motions of sacrifice doesn’t always translate into actual relationship with God. Just like going through our modern motions of our various religious practices doesn’t always translate into a relationship with God.
And that is what God wants—to be in relationship with us.
So why this idea of a broken and contrite heart? Speaking from personal experience, I spent the first three-plus decades of my life morphing my perfectionism and peacemaking instincts into a mistaken idea that I was responsible for everyone and everything in the world, and it was up to me personally to fix everything, which, being impossible, made me miserable. In short, I thought I was God, and I was failing miserably. Where did that leave God? You know…somewhere…out there…doing more important things. Certainly we had no relationship. I had to reach a place where I fully accepted the futility of putting myself in the place of God, and became open to actually seeking out God (and letting God be God) before I could enter into relationship with God.
It wasn’t that God was preventing me from the relationship, rejecting me in some way. Quite the contrary. God was patiently, lovingly waiting. Right there. But I couldn’t see it until I had the humility to accept that I wanted and needed that relationship. No burnt offering or other religious practice would have done. I had to offer God all of me.
Embracing God, you wait with open arms until I have the humility to seek you out.
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