Measure of Love

• Gold, silver, and bronze. Purple, blue, and scarlet yarns.
• Hooks, frames, bars, poles, pillars, and bases.
• The mercy seat, bread of Presence, the lampstand.
• Anointing oil, fragrant incense. Two and a half cubits of this and that.

I wish I could say I marveled at the details. Instead I was sighing and praying to God that he would make the reading of Exodus 25-30 easier. The chapters are about God’s instructions of making the ark of the covenant, the tabernacle, the altar, the priest’s garments, and more — written with increasing detail like reading that of an architect’s manual, AKA an alien language.

Reading the chapters reminded me of bureaucracy: perhaps the process of enrollment in UP, or getting a driver’s license. First, you need to secure the requirements of various documents and IDs. Then, you have to fall in line early in the morning to go from window to window and endure the number of sweaty and impatient people like yourself. Wait for your turn, follow instructions, submit complete requirements, lest you end up at cut off time. All for that long-awaited status or license.

I could only imagine how more difficult it really will be to apply for a relationship with God without Jesus Christ. Perhaps you needed a Certificate of Repentance, a Kindness degree with 12 units of Good Works, a lifetime experience of Sacrifice, a practical exam consist of Resisting Temptation, a proof of Faith, and passing the Obedience test. And if you’re a Gentile, forget about even applying! All these… for the passport to Paradise, an approval of Adoption, and a citizenship in Heaven.

Similar to bureaucratic procedures, there are always fixers hounding at the gates for a price, promising of a secured document, a line-free pass, and a ticket to escaping the procedures. But there is only one Fixer who actually paid for you a lot more expensively even before you reach the gates. And He is not with a shabby persona, but the one who actually knows the Authority that could give you all the passes you needed so you won’t ever have to fall in line. ~I could hear the papers dropping.

When it has become easy to take for granted God’s unconditional love for us, then we should think of what could have been the conditions. The bottom line will always be that God is holy and we will never be qualified for his mercy. Yet what did he do? He filled out the forms for us in his blood and stamped it with his flesh, and all of a sudden the only submission we have to make is our will to His.

Now as I read the detailed chapters of Exodus, still in slight agony over the cubits, I could afford to say, “Thank you God, for loving us without measure.”