Refrigerator Art

Something that is very common in most homes in our culture are kitchen refrigerators bearing the artwork of the home's children. Little ones bring them home from school or from their rooms to present as "gifts" to the mothers and fathers they love. If we're honest, just about all of these offerings are pretty bad. They're just scribblings on a refrigerator door, but they're treasured by the parents who receive them. They love them, and they want their child to know that, as well as any who would visit their home. There is teaching here for how the Father sees the offerings of His children that are given to Him.

So many of us are perfectionists, at least to some degree. We want what we do to be well received. We can also be our own worst critics, disparaging our works and efforts far more than anyone else. To us, they just don't seem good enough. I think that this can be especially true as concerns what it is that we do for Him, give to Him through our work in His Kingdom. I know it has been so for me. Whether it's a sermon preached, a lesson taught, a ministry performed, I too often have thought, with ample help from the enemy, that none of it is "good enough." Yet this is not how the heart and eyes of the Father see it. To the world, and even to some in the church, they may just be "scribblings on a door," but to Him they are precious. When offered to Him from a heart of love and worship, they are offerings and works comprised of silver and gold. Father God displays them with a heart overflowing with joy and love for the one who has given it to Him. He doesn't look at the skill level of the one who brings the offering, just at the heart and its motivation to lay it all before Him.

I remember a teaching by my theology teacher at Bible College. He used the example of a small child with dirty hands who brought their father a glass for cold water on a hot day. The child's face beamed with love for their father, but the cup of water was tinged with soil from their dirty hands. Yet the father never noticed the dirt. He was focused on the love of his child, and he drank it with joy. So it is with God. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When it comes to the eyes of Father God, all He sees is beauty in those things given to Him in love and worship. He doesn't see the human imperfections and limits involved, just the love behind it all.

Scripture says that whatever we do for Him, we're to do it with all our might and being. If we do so, whatever we give Him, no matter how humanly flawed or imperfect it may be, will find its way onto His "refrigerator door," and one day, when we come before Him, it will be seen by all. May we not forget that, and may we never cease to bring Him our scribblings, done with hearts and hands of love.

Blessings,
Pastor O