16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar. (ESV)
The Christian High and Holy Days are upon us and this week even the vast majority of the most low-church churches are planning something special for Good Friday and Easter. With Easter comes the Easter only crowd -- a group not to be despised nor scolded for its lack of faithfulness the rest of the year, but exhorted to greater faith, which always begins with deeper conversion.
Transformation at the deepest level never begins with money or sacrifice. For these are often used by the head-strong recalcitrant as forms of appeasement. I think of the man in our church (now nearing sainthood) who in the fledgling and cantankerous beginning of his discipleship decided that doing his part meant totaling up the entire church budget figure and then dividing it by the number of individual members. That was the part he owed -- nothing more.
The more deeply converted know they owe more than that. They know they owe everything and they know they could never pay it all back. The more deeply converted have been humbled. There is now no longer any sense of arrogance or entitlement. They have discovered the deep truth of what God truly wants: a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. These things God will not despise. These God delights in; for God can really work with humility -- someone who knows that without God he's nothing more than a lump of clay.
Sunday before last the men's ensemble at our church sang an old hymn:
Lord, now indeed I find
Thy power and Thine alone,
Can change the leper's spots
and melt the heart of stone.
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
The heart of stone needs needs breaking. This is the first real step towards the deeper conversion -- a crack in the suit of armor.
And between the cracks grace sneaks in.
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