In this way the priest will make atonement on his behalf before the Lord, and he will be forgiven for anything he may have done to incur guilt. Leviticus 6:7
You and I are copper pipes in the crawl space of life.
In the fall of 1997, my younger daughter, Julie, bought her first house. It was a little two-bedroom, one-bath ranch beauty about fifteen minutes from our home in Nashville. The first time I walked through this solid structure, built in the early ‘50s, I told Julie that, if she wanted me to, I’d be happy to help her remodel the bathroom. She could live at our house until the work was completed. I didn’t need to ask twice.
I can only imagine what the neighbors must have thought when, on her first day of possession, a huge dumpster was delivered to the driveway. Then they saw Julie, my nephew, Erik, and me walking into the house with crowbars and a sledgehammer and dragging huge pieces of drywall and a bathtub out. For the next two months, during every spare moment, Julie and I were at the house.
Because we had decided to move the toilet from one corner of the bathroom to the other and exchange the dapple-gray cast-iron bathtub for a full-sized walk-in shower, I had a lot of plumbing work to do. I spent many hours on my knees in the crawl space under the house, cutting, fitting, and melting solder to secure new copper water- supply pipes. “Left is hot, right is cold,” I whispered to myself a few hundred times.
Have you ever thought about how you and I are like those copper pipes? You haven’t? OK, then, see if this makes sense to you.
A pipe’s only responsibility is to take what is given to it—hot or cold water—and faithfully pass it safely through to its destination. Of course, there’s a lot to be said about enhancing what it’s been given—as in the parable of the talents in the Gospels—and we’ll talk about that later. But for now, let’s focus on this idea: everything we “own” has been given to us—our talents, abilities, and possessions. Our job is to faithfully pass these things along and bring them as gifts to our heavenly Father who knows exactly what to do with them.
Today’s verse—and the chapters that surround it—make this truth clear. At an early age, Israelite children must have learned directions to the temple because they and their parents were constantly commanded to bring things to the Lord. Day after day, experience upon experience. They brought their lives, their stuff to Him. He blessed their gifts, and He forgave their transgressions. He still does this today.
God may need to take a wire brush to the clogs. Or patch the dripping seams. We offer who we are to our Father without any impediments. He knows what to do.