As I was riding in the car the other day, Ike Ndolo‘s song, Offering, popped up on Spotify. As I listened with one ear and used most of my concentration supervising my teenaged chauffeur, one line really jumped out at me.
Jesus, bread of life, bread for all…This is my offering, this is my everything
And it just hit me like a lightning bolt. This life of mine, these children we’re raising, the family that we are creating, and the love I share with my husband…that’s it! That is my offering.
I don’t make things. I don’t produce goods. At the end of a typical day, I can’t hold out my hands and fill them with things that I have worked on. (I mean, unless you count laundry or dinner. Then maybe that would count for something.)
As a general rule, though, what I offer to the world isn’t tangible. You can’t touch the songs that I sing. When I cook something, it gets devoured. If the internet suddenly disappeared, all of this silly writing I do would go away with it.
Yet, what I have to offer to the world and to my God, is something living. My offerings to Jesus walk and talk, breathe and grow.
My offering is love poured out over and over again into the lives of the people God has entrusted to my care. It is a marriage to a man that I can only hope to someday deserve. And it is four beautiful, healthy, children that we have the honor and privilege of encouraging on their road to heaven.
It’s that simple. Yet, it’s also simply profound and incredibly humbling.
My marriage, my children…they are my offering. They are my everything. They are what I will have to hold out to Jesus at the end of my life and say, “Here, Lord. I did the best I could.”
Each and every day, God. Help me be worthy of this task you’ve given to me, this offering you have asked of me.
Photo by Maria Shanina on Unsplash
