God's Most Favorite Day

Again, some context for these stories:

I absolutely love the Jesus Storybook Bible. I have read it to my kids and have used it countless times in a class that I teach with Cru. I love its focus and its style and its simplicity and at the same time its depth.  

But the one thing I don't love about it is that there isn't enough of it.

So, I have begun writing stories that Sally Lloyd-Jones doesn't cover in the JSB for my 7 year old son. Because of how much my kids have loved the JSB, I have attempted to capture the tone and focus and style of Sally's writing (including some of her great phrases). Not sure if I have succeeded or not, but they have provided rich times of reading when I tuck my son in bed at night.

I wanted to begin to occasionally share these in case you wanted to share them with your kids (or enjoy them for yourself).

God's Most Favorite Day 

The Day of Atonement - Leviticus 16

As the people of God were traveling from Egypt to their new home, like a good parent, God was giving his children rules to help them know how life works best and how to show their love for him.  But, because of the poison in their hearts, as much as they wanted to obey God, they would fail over and over and over again.  

With every time that they failed, they weren’t only breaking God’s rules, they were breaking God’s heart.  You see, God loves his children like how a new parent loves their new baby.  

Have you ever seen the way a parent looks at their brand new baby?  The parent stares and makes funny sounds and smiles and touches and hugs and sings to them.  And it makes the parent’s heart leap for joy when their baby stares into their eyes and when their baby’s whole face smiles back at them with a toothless grin.

But when God’s children would break God’s rules, God and his children couldn’t look at one another anymore.  As much as it would break his heart, God would have to turn his eyes away from them because when people break God’s rules, they have to be punished.  And you know what their punishment was?  Though it may not sound that bad to you, it was the worst kind of punishment.  Their punishment was that they were not allowed to be near God anymore.  And he couldn’t be near them...and stare into their eyes and sing to them and hug them.  

But God desperately wanted to be near his children.  And because of his never ending, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love for his children, God came up with an idea.  He created a special day.  In fact, it became God’s absolutely most favorite day of the year.  It was the day that God and his children could once again be near one another and look again into one another’s eyes.  

On this very special day every year, God decided that bulls and goats would take the punishment instead of the people.  And you know how they took the punishment?  One of them was killed.  And for the other, the most important priest would lay his hands on the head of the goat and say all the ways God’s people had broken God’s rules.  

As he put his hands on the goat’s head, he would say, "Sally lied to her parents".  "Tommy stole his brother's pacifier and flushed it down the toilet". (It definitely wasn't funny, though).

And as he said all those things, it was like he was taking from each person all those yucky, awful things that they had done that year and was laying all of those bad things on the head of the goat.  

And because that goat was taking the punishment, he wasn’t allowed to be near God anymore.  So, after all the bad things were off the people and on the head of the goat, another priest would take the goat for a long walk.  They would walk and walk and walk.  The people would watch and watch as if all of the rules they had broken were being taken away. Soon, the priest and the goat would fade away in the distance.  

The priest would walk over hills and through rivers and stopped only when they got to the place where absolutely, positively no one lived - in the middle of nowhere.  And you know what that priest did?  He would let go of the rope and leave the goat there.  And then he made absolutely sure the goat didn’t follow him back.  

And after a while, the priest would come back to God’s people...without the goat.  And God’s people celebrated that the poison from their heart (and all of the guilty feelings) was removed and taken far, far away.  God would never hold those things against them ever again.  

And God would celebrate also because he could again look into the eyes of his children.  He would smile and sing and laugh as he stared at his beautiful children.  And you would think it would be “happily ever after”.  

But it wasn’t because the celebration wouldn’t last very long. The poison would enter again into his children’s hearts and they would turn their eyes from God and God would have to turn his eyes again from his children.  Until the special day the next year.  And then the next year.  And then the next year.  

But one year much later, it wasn’t a goat that took the punishment.  It was a person.  And it wasn’t just any person.  It was God’s Son.  All of the yucky and bad things that people had done were put on him. And this time, the poison was removed from his children’s hearts not just for a few days or even for just a year...but forever so they could be near him forever.  And it was truly “happily ever after”.