God cares about even the minute details of my life. How encouraging! How sobering! Yes, everything about my life—even the things that are not visible to anyone else—matters to God. That is why I must learn to practice the presence of God in my ordinary moments throughout the day—how I think, what I do and say, how I respond to others. It is all worship to God—or at least it should be.
The Journey// Focus: Exodus 21:1
The Lord gave Moses the following laws for his people…
God cares about the details of our lives—how we treat one another, how we can get justice when our rights are violated, how we are responsible for our actions, and even our inaction—the things we should have done. That is why God gave Moses a series of rules to guide the lives of the Israelites as they lived in their newly formed society.
Some of these laws seem arcane: “Suppose the slave loves his wife and children so much that he won’t leave without them [when given the chance to buy his freedom]. In that case, he must stand beside either the door or the doorpost at the place of worship, while his owner punches a small hole through one of his ears with a sharp metal rod. This makes him a slave for life.” (Exodus 21:5-6)
Some of the laws seem quite clear cut and totally relevant for today: “Death is the punishment for murder.” (Exodus 21:13) Whether you are pro or con with capital punishment, there was a very direct order from God about how to deal with someone who willfully took the life of another. In that sense, having a discussion about if and how it fits in society today is a relevant topic.
Some of these are hard to discern the clear intent behind the law: “Suppose a pregnant woman suffers a miscarriage as the result of an injury caused by someone who is fighting. If she isn’t badly hurt, the one who injured her must pay whatever fine her husband demands and the judges approve. But if she is seriously injured, the payment will be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, cut for cut, and bruise for bruise.” (Exodus 21:22-25) So would this suggest that killing the unborn is murder or not? A case could be forcefully made either way.
What we have here are a series of laws, provided by God, to govern the civil life of the newly formed society of Israel—laws that are arcane, laws that are still culturally relevant, laws that reside in the gray area of justice and morality. And though we may never know the real intent behind some of these laws, and how or if God wants us to apply them today, what we do know for certain is this: God cared about the details of the everyday lives of his people, Israel.
And since God never changes, that means he still cares about the everyday details of the lives of his people—that is, you and me. So what does that mean for us today? It simply yet profoundly means that God is involved. It means everything that happens to us and through us is known by an ever-watchful God. It means that my behavior matters to my Creator. It means that God wants me to be very careful how I live, how I act toward others, and that I follow his design for life as closely and as respectfully to his will as I possibly can. It means that all of life, my eating, breathing, sleeping, walking around life is to be offered as a pleasing sacrifice of worship to him.
That is what worship is, after all: the offering of everyday life to God. And since he has concerned himself enough to provide details on how I ought to live, then I ought to live each and every moment with the careful sense that what I do counts before him.
God cares about even the minute details of my life. That is so encouraging while at the same time so sobering. Yes, it all matters to God.
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