Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work. They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning.
Exodus 36:2-3
Have you ever thought that what you had to contribute to the world wasn’t enough? I was thinking about the above verse from Exodus and I loved how everyone pitched in to build the temple. The craftsmen used their skills, those who didn’t have skills specific to the task at hand, brought offerings of whatever they could to the temple. They didn’t say they had nothing to offer. No, they all knew they had been given specific strengths and that no gift was too small and they used their gifts accordingly. What if more people in the Bible had shied away from doing something because they didn’t feel what they had to contribute was enough?
I started thinking about this verse in light of this Christmas season. There Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem, taking time off from work that they would rather not take, at an very inopportune time—especially for Mary. They were struggling to find a place to stay in the hustle and bustle of a town that was overrun with visitors. Finally they came across an inn and even though it was full the innkeeper allowed them to stay in the stable. He cracked the door open and offered a modicum of generosity to them.
Imagine if he had said no. Imagine if he felt that the stable wasn’t good enough and so had declined entirely.
We don’t know a lot about the details of what this particular inn was like. In most cities of the time, all the visitors slept in one room, sometimes on multiple palettes, sometimes in one large low bed, but there was not much privacy to be had. Maybe Mary was so heavily pregnant that it was part of the problem— no one had a place where a woman could give birth with any degree of privacy if her time came while at the inn. But this innkeeper allows them to stay in the stable. I don’t know this for sure but I’ll bet you the innkeeper wasn’t sleeping out in the stable with them. I bet he and his family still had moderately comfortable accommodations inside the inn itself. He could have offered his spot inside to this young couple but he didn’t. He had a stable so he offered that. What would we have done in that same situation?
I think many of us get caught up in trying to do the perfect right thing that we miss a host of smaller opportunities that come our way. The innkeeper could, and perhaps should have, offered his place inside the house to Mary and Joseph and stayed in the stable himself, but I’m guessing that would have felt like a little too much effort. So instead of making sure he got it perfectly right, he offered what he knew he could easily do.
What opportunities do we miss because we are trying to make sure we have it completely right that we don’t do anything?
While we should not be lazy about what we have to offer, Jesus did make it abundantly clear to treat others the way we want to be treated, we have to start somewhere, and in time, we will get better at serving others. C. S. Lewis said, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” I believe that same principle applies here. If selling all you have and giving it to the poor sounds really scary, what about giving a monetary gift once a month or starting to volunteer in a food pantry? My guess is the Holy Spirit will fill you with a generosity that you never imagined but you have to be willing to crack the door open for the Holy Spirit to work.
This Christmas and holiday season when opportunities are literally around every corner, I urge you to pause and consider your unique gifts and abilities and see where you can crack open the door for the Holy Spirit to work through you.
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