Talking Hands

“When you help someone out, don't think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively.” (Matthew 6:3 The Message)

This is the bit in Matthew about giving, and not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing. It’s about being open handed and generous and not keeping accounts, or collecting Brownie points or Blue Peter badges along the way.

I am thinking how hard it is to give quietly and unobtrusively.

My right hand would like to do a bit of boasting to my left hand. My right hand would like to list every good gift given, or deed done, neatly in some leather bound ledger, carefully add up all of the numbers, climb up on a rostrum beneath a million lights and present some kind of medal to itself. Yes, my right hand thinks some kind of reward is in order. My right hand is worried about being taken for granted.

My left hand is trying to remind the right hand that God is more than aware, not just of the gifts given and the deed done, but also the thoughts behind the gifts and the deeds! The state of the heart matters more than the gifts or the deeds.

My right hand doesn’t want to listen to my left hand. My right hand knows my left hand is speaking the truth…but sometimes truth hurts. My right hand wants its five minutes on the soap box! It wants its moment of glory.

My left hand wants all the glory to go to God.

My right hand, deep down, wants the same.

Together, both hands are lifted to the heavens in praise to God. Without Him there would be nothing to give, and no one to share it with!

Stepping Into Something Greater

I treated myself to a book yesterday. It is just a small book and didn’t cost a huge amount. Why is it, I wonder, that Christian books seem to cost more than other books? It is by Dave Billborough – “Worship and the Presence of God”.

I read these words this morning. He has described exactly what it is I want to experience when I worship.

“When we worship Christ, we step out of the reality present all around us and into the truth of who God is – a much bigger reality. As we worship, so we begin to bridge the gulf between the transcendent worlds of the unseen and the seen…We might meet together on a Sunday morning and go through many familiar acts of worship, and yet we always need to be reminded that we are stepping into something greater. We’re aligning ourselves with the things of heaven as we worship.”

Sometimes it seems that we have shifted the focus away from that “stepping into something greater” to just going through the motions of the “familiar acts”.

Someone who was fed up of going through the familiar acts was Moses. In Exodus 33 Moses does some stepping out into something greater. It is not enough to see a cloud or a pillar of fire, or to hear a voice that sounds like thunder. It is not enough to see God’s provision of water from a rock or in a flock of quails. It is not enough to see God’s power in each of the plagues, or in the parting of the Red Sea. Not quite “familiar” in my experience – but it was in Moses.

Moses wants something more intimate. He wants God himself – a personal encounter not disguised as a burning bush. God sees the desperation and the desire and graciously complies.

Not enough of His people ask to see His glory today. We are not desperate enough! We don’t like heights – so standing in a cleft of a rock is too far out of our comfort zone. We are more like the rest of the Israelites – watching from the safety of the doorways of our tents.