Your Morning Coffee 08/01/2025

Good morning!

Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father help us not to lose focus of the difference between His blessings, and He Himself. Father, out of your great love for us you bless in the every day, with all manner of things. Even our breath and our heartbeat, you give freely. Help us not to look to your gifts instead of you. Help us not to get lost in things, but instead to come close to your side, in prayer, in worship, and in careful consideration of your word. In the name of Jesus, help us to remember who you are, and whose we are. Amen.

Your Morning Song: "Hallelujah Anyway" by Rend Collective

Your Morning Scripture: Exodus 32:1-4

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.

And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

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I hope that we are all on the same page about this golden calf fiasco. Bad. Right? Offensive and disgusting and sickening and whatever other fitting word you can think of. But just a quick question that might be helpful to consider.

Where did the Hebrews get the gold? I thought they were slaves in Egypt?

They were slaves. But as they left Egypt, God caused the Egyptians to give them gold, silver, and clothing as they left (Exodus 12:35-36). Yet another detail, among a host of details, that marked God as the one who had fought for them, freed them, and now showered them with gifts from the very hands of those who had enslaved them. Wow. Amazing!

So why the golden calf? Why the betrayal? Why the rejection? This golden calf was not made several generations later, when gold and silver had become heirlooms, their purpose forgotten. These were the same people. So why did they do this?

They loved the gift over the giver. God's good blessings quite literally became their idol.

Are you like them? I am.

As with any temptation of any kind, we all have to face it. Do I love God? Or have I given the love that ought to be for Him, to the things He has given me.

Do not ever mistake the gift for the Giver. And do not, by comparing your life to others, mistake the things themselves as a sign that the Giver loves you more or less.

God loves you. And want to relate to you, relate with you, to bring you close and grow you and teach you and love you. No material thing could ever take the place of the relationship He made us to have with Him.

Love and pursue the Giver. Not the gifts. And you will find that even the gifts themselves are more satisfying than you thought they could be. When first you are satisfied in Him.