“No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.” – From 2 Samuel 24:24

This morning, I began my prayer with my usual plea: “God me merciful to me a sinner.” Although I am a faithful church-going, jail-preaching, Bible-distributing, upstanding, law-abiding citizen, I am also a sinner. Before I met Christ, my sins were mostly those of commission - bad things that I should not have been doing; nowadays, my sins are mostly those of omission – good things that I ought to be doing. Even during prayer, I often find myself thinking more about composing music, my business, or my long to-do lists rather than setting my mind on “things above”.

It got me to thinking: How often do we give God our leftovers; the time that we can spare, or our unexpected free time? Do we write the tithe check first, or simply try to make sure that we have enough money left in the account to give on Sunday? I believe that it was the famed preacher G. Campbell Morgan, in his book “Wherein Have We Robbed God?” who astutely observed that sacrilege is often defined as taking something that belongs to God and using it profanely, and yet there is a bigger sacrilege that we commit all the time: that is offering to God that which is of no value to us.

When I think of the recognition made in 2 Corinthians 5:14 and 15, those sins of omission become glaring. Indeed, may God be merciful to me, a gross sinner. Further reflection upon the aforementioned passage demonstrates that God has been merciful. Christ died for me, a sinner. May that fact inspire me to give a little more of myself.