Daily Devotion

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.


Pay Attention to the Details
GOD spoke to Moses: "Tell the Israelites that they are to set aside offerings for me. Receive the offerings from everyone who is willing to give. These are the offerings I want you to receive from them: gold, silver, bronze; blue, purple, and scarlet material; fine linen; goats' hair; tanned rams' skins; dolphin skins; acacia wood; lamp oil; spices for anointing oils and for fragrant incense; onyx stones and other stones for setting in the Ephod and the Breastpiece. Let them construct a Sanctuary for me so that I can live among them. You are to construct it following the plans I've given you, the design for The Dwelling and the design for all its furnishings.
"First let them make a Chest using acacia wood: make it three and three-quarters feet long and two and one-quarter feet wide and deep. Cover it with a veneer of pure gold inside and out and make a molding of gold all around it. Cast four gold rings and attach them to its four feet, two rings on one side and two rings on the other. Make poles from acacia wood and cover them with a veneer of gold and insert them into the rings on the sides of the Chest for carrying the Chest. The poles are to stay in the rings; they must not be removed." - Exodus 25:1—15 MSG

God cares about the details as well as he cares about the big picture. Just as God told Moses what to say regarding the plagues, so too God told Moses what decorations he wanted in the tabernacle. God explained the sorts of cloth to be used, details about the furniture, even the kinds of spices to be used for the anointing oils. He explained in detail how the ark was to be built and how it was to be carried. God had specific plans for how the Israelites were going to worship him formally.

Nothing is too small for God. Nothing is insignificant. God concerned himself with the number of gold rings to attach to the ark of the covenant, and he bothered to specify the kind of wood to use for the ark even when that wood was going to be covered over with a layer of gold. God concerned himself with those details knowing the finished box would wind up behind curtains that only one man once a year would even see. No matter how much you may think both you and your concerns are insignificant, they aren't. You are worth more to God than the choice of spices and the design of furniture.