My Sacrifice

In 2 Samuel 24, David is going to make a sacrifice to prevent God's judgment on the people for his sin in taking the census. A lot of people have already died in the plague, and God agrees to relent as long as David builds an altar and makes a sacrifice on a specific location. One problem: David doesn't own the land. So David's all like: "okay, Auranah, I'll buy your land and some livestock so I can burn them." And Auranah says: "here, just take this stuff, I'm all for you sacrificing to stop this terrible plague." And David shares his best piece of wisdom yet: "I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing”(2 Sam 24:24, NIV).



This gets us into an interesting point about sacrifices; in order for them to mean something, our sacrifice has to be ours. It reminds me of the story (yes, I've been in church a bit, and I've picked up some of the common illustrations, and this one holds weight) about this little boy who gets two dollars from his grandma every week before he goes to church. One is for the offering (50% TITHE!!!) and the other is for ice cream after worship. Well, one week, he's walking to church, and he drops one of his dollars, and it goes into the sewer. Naturally, the boy begins to pray: "dear God, so sorry I dropped your dollar."



Telling, isn't it? When calamity strikes and we find ourselves in financial straits, the money we've lost tends to come out of our tithe before it comes out of our personal expenses. Furthermore, the boy's gift was always a sacrifice that cost him nothing. And when his ability to meet his desires was threatened, his gift was oh-so-quick to go. I'm not against giving kids money to put into the plate on Sundays (they can be super funny to watch and it teaches about giving), I'm just saying maybe we should spend a little more time teaching about the value of sacrificial giving, and trying to make that gift mean something.



And maybe we should learn that lesson as well. Our giving should be sacrificial, and it should be representative of our willingness to do without if we're forced to make a choice. And this is one of the few occaisions where I'm going to encourage my readers to be like David. So that's a bonus.