Day 75: His Presence

Matthew 24:32-51; Numbers 28-29; Songs 8:5-15

It is in these passages that the concept of being taken and left behind are presented.  But as Austin has pointed out before, it is unclear when this will happen—before the earthquakes and rise of the Antichrist, or perhaps believers will have to experience end times.  Either way, the reality is, everything on this earth is temporary.  The only thing that will last is Jesus Christ and the word of God.

With all the sacrifices required, the priests would be doing nothing all day long but killing animals, sprinkling their blood, and burning things on the altar.  Is that really the case?  That it was an all day every day sort of thing?  It seems like the people would be offering bulls and rams and goats and grain and wine all the time.  By giving so much, they would definitely be breaking their materialism.  They (and we) would hopefully realize that everything they have belongs to God anyway.  Perhaps part of the point was to constantly remind people who God was.  By continuously sacrificing and surrendering to God what I have, I am doing the same things—offering myself and my things to God as worship.

If I think about Songs as the church and the Lord, then it is really cool at the end where the woman (the church) says that Solomon can keep his silver and the others can keep their profits, because all she wants is the presence of Solomon, or in my thinking, the Lord.  What God has to offer me shouldn’t matter—the only thing that I should desire is his presence.  A good life, financial prosperity, fame, blessings of other kinds, those are just things that will pass away when the world ends.  But, God’s presence, our relationship, should be my true passion.