JCK-at-large SITE

 

 I asked the barber where she got the scissors.

“Dollar Store,” she said.

“How am I supposed to get a good haircut,” I asked, “with Dollar Store scissors?”

“You can try the shop down the road,” she said, me with my half-cut dome.  “But they get their scissors at the same place.”  I swallowed my pride and took the Dollar Store Haircut.  The cut certainly cost more than the scissors.

But you can’t get away with Dollar Store offerings to God.  The Lord is so incensed with them, he says, “Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors… I have no pleasure in you… I will not accept such an offering from your hand” (Malachi 1:10).  Imagine, closed houses of worship being the preference of the Almighty!

Whence the offence?  These people of 420bc were presenting to Him bargain basement cheap goods as their offerings: blind animals, lame or sick, stolen, blemished.

“Try presenting such offerings to your governor,” says the Lord.  “Will he accept you or show you favour?  With such a gift in your hand, will God show you favour? … For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations …. For I am a great King… (1:14).

We don’t usually think of God as having his feelings hurt.  But He obviously doesn’t take kindly to Dollar Store offerings.  

We need the attitude of King David who said, “I shall not offer to the Lord that which costs me nothing.”

We need the attitude of Leonard Heroo, late preacher of distinction: “Once in your lifetime, offer something to God which is truly sacrificial, that throws you back on His faithful provision for your very necessities.”

We need the reminder and high call of Howard B. Grose’s old hymn:

“Give of your best to the master, give of the strength of your youth…

Give Him your loyal devotion;  Give Him the best that you have….”