The Little Drummer Boy AKA Cain

I’m not quite ready to leave the story of Cain.  He continues to invade the forefront of my mind.  Maybe if I pen the words responsible for the unrest, I can put Cain to bed, or at least move him into YOUR bedroom.

According to  Genesis 4, Cain and Abel are the first siblings on the planet.  Cain worked the garden and Abel tended the flocks. When it came time to bring their offerings to the Lord, Cain brought “some of the fruits” while Abel brought an offering from the “firstborn of his flock.”  When the Lord gave favor to Abel’s offering and “the look” to Cain’s fruits, Cain grew jealously angry and murdered his brother.

I have never understood why Cain burned angry enough to commit first-degree, pre-meditated murder.  God didn’t shun Cain or berate him or shame him.  He did what good parents do when kids don’t finish cleaning the kitchen after dinner.  He invited Cain to try again.  He pointed out the dirty dishes still on the stove and the crumbs in the sink, instructing him to do better next time.  I’m inclined to think God understood the intentions of Cain’s heart, which I have come to believe were pure and good and rooted in wanting to bring his very best to His Lord.

The first fruits of my strawberries are puny samples of what’s to come.  I never try a new recipe for guests.  I always experiment the first time on my family.  (Hence the reason no one EVER eats roast at my house.  It’s the one dish I cannot seem to consistently get right.)  And trust me, this is the not the first draft of today’s blog!

The first of most things are rarely good enough to share.   When bringing a gift to my Savior, I want it to present my very best.  I want perfection.  I want to bring the biggest, reddest, juiciest, and sweetest strawberries of the season.  I want to bake the most perfectly delicious cheesecake with ginger-crumb crust and cranberry-maple topping.  And I want to bring Him my very best words in the softest, sweetest, smiling-est tone instead of the short sarcastic silent sentences only my brain can hear.

But He isn’t interested in the “cleaned-up” version of me and my efforts.
He’s interested in the true, tangible, transparent me.
He’s interested in the child-like me coming to Him with my mediocre, messy, and muddled attempts of life.

     And that’s why I cry every bloomin’ time I hear Faith Hill sing, “The Little Drummer Boy.”  With great laughter, my husband reminds me, “Beverly, you know there was no drummer boy at the manger.”  “There is in my manger,” I caustically retort.  You see, that drummer boy presented the only gift he had to bring the newborn King, and the King smiled.  So, perhaps, when I bring my first attempts, He grins.  Perhaps even when my first fruits are poor samples of what is to come, He gobbles them up, grinning from ear-to-ear, like a good mom does the first time her child bakes (burns) cookies or tries her hand at laundry.  Perhaps, Jesus doesn’t care about the final product as much as He cares about me sharing life with Him.

     That’s good.  Read it again.

Jesus doesn’t care about the final product as much as He cares about us
sharing our mediocre, messy, and muddled attempts at life.

Jesus isn’t interested in the cleaned-up version of our lives.
He wants to share life with the true, tangible, transparent us.

And that’s good news, because there’s bound to be a bunch of typos in this blog, I mean, in this life.