Starting the second week

I am in my second week of this endeavor to read the entire Bible in 90 days. Yesterday was my first day to miss and today filled up fast and I found myself on the couch at 8 pm trying to get caught up on 2 days of reading. I may have been able to do it had it been a book full of exciting stories but I was reading the last part of Exodus and between the details of the tabernacle and the heat of the day and my full stomach from supper and you have a recipe for disaster. My husband came over and woke me up where I had dozed off reading Exodus 39. I quickly finished chapter 40 and decided I would have to play catch up tomorrow and start earlier in the day.

Two things stood out from today’s reading, when I went back and looked at it again a bit more awake…. The first is Exodus 29: 45, 46 And I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them; I am the LORD their God.
This is such an awesome concept for me … God dwells with me. Sometimes even I don’t want to dwell with me, but the holy, perfect, creator-God, who is complete in Himself and has no “need” for anything, chooses to dwell with and interact with puny, sinful, selfish, weak, incomplete, little old me. WOW!

The second thing that stood out, and I must have heard a sermon from this text because I had these things underlined already, is found in chapters 35 and 36. I had underlined some phrases in these chapters and added a few more that I noticed this time as I read. Ex 35:5 whoever is of a willing heart , let him bring … Ex 35: 21 And everyone whose heart stirred him and everyone whose spirit moved him came and brought …Ex: 35:22 All whose hearts moved them, both men and women, came and brought … Ex. 35:26 all the women whose heart stirred with a skill spun…Ex 35: 29 all the men and women, whose heart moved them to bring… brought a freewill offering to the LORD. Ex- 36:3 everyone whose heart stirred him, to come to the work to perform it … Ex. 36:5,6 they said to Moses, “The people are bringing much more than enough for the construction work which the LORD commanded us to perform.” So Moses issued a command, and a proclamation was circulated throughout the camp, saying , “Let neither man nor woman any longer perform work for the contributions of the sanctuary.” Thus the people were restrained from bringing any more.

Their giving to the LORD’s work was not done out of obligation or habit, but it came because their hearts were moved within them to participate. Their hearts stirred them to not just give a token offering, but to give generously and in such abundance that they finally had to be told to stop because there was more than enough to finish the work. When was the last time I was so moved and stirred in my heart that I could not help but respond in reckless generosity? Sadly, I can’t think of an instance right away, which indicates to me that it has been too long.