Today’s passage is Exodus 23:1-19. Do not lie, show favoritism, accept bribes, or follow a wicked crowd. Help your enemy if he is overburdened. Do not deny justice to the poor or oppress foreigners. On the seventh year leave your fields fallow and every Sabbath let your slaves and animals rest. Obey God and do not speak the names of other gods. Celebrate three annual festivals and always bring the best of your first fruits to God.
Why leave fields fallow every seventh year? Why can’t we come to God empty-handed?
“No one is to appear to me empty-handed”(15)
Last Sunday I thought I came to God empty-handed for my baptism.
When I left the stage, though, my hands were full of flowers and gifts people brought to me in celebration.
Reflecting on the moment Pastor Kim’s hand touched my head with her gloved hand wet from the baptismal water in light of today’s passage, however, I see that I was anything but empty-handed.
Before my hands were loaded with my friends’ gifts, they held a sinful life that I laid down in repentance. They were very full hands indeed!
I see that I never come to God empty-handed. Every day I offer up prayers to him with my hands and words. Every payday, I give my tithe with my hands.
Every day I confess at least one sin.
Every day that I help someone, like today with a troubled student, I call on God for his power to help.
I bring my trouble and my need to him and exchange them for his grace, just as I did on Sunday at my baptism.
I never have empty hands when I come to my Lord.
Application: when I hold my daughter let my hands offer her to you, my God.
O Lord, keep me mindful that all I have comes from you and let me give you praise. Let me never forget that my hands are stained with sin that but that still you receive me with love.
