mgpcpastor's blog

Were you ever aware that his offering was not accepted?
Did he hide it from you all?

Both of you approached the altar together all your lives.
Initially you two watched your parents bring acceptable offerings on your behalf.
Perhaps you held his hand as you both looked on.
In time he was the first, other than them, to bring an offering.
Did you watch with pride, your own actions soon to mirror his?
Others would follow, you and he helping them learn how to approach and what to bring.
Dozens and then hundreds followed your footsteps toward the altar.
Thousands of acceptable offerings all received.
But not his.

His heart was different from yours.
Bitterness and resentment were cultivated and nurtured in season after season of unaccepted ritual.
How many years did it take? How many decades?
How long did you both continue to bring your offerings, one acceptable and one not?
Did he act as if nothing was wrong, until he could hide it no more; a fallen face bearing sullen testimony of spiritual isolation?
Did you ever have the opportunity to long and pray that he would turn?

Instead of his heart softening in repentance toward God, his heart hardened toward you.
Were you aware of sin crouching at his door, of the enmity simmering, then boiling, within?
Were you ever tempted to forsake the acceptable offering in order to bridge the gulf of broken brotherhood?
If you did, such thoughts were never acted upon.
You lived as though a promise made was already fulfilled; the acceptance of your offerings commending you as righteous.

Besides, what was the worst that could happen?
Though fallen, it was an innocent world.
Until that day, the day he invited you to walk.
Did hope rise in your heart that perhaps this would be the day he would turn and bring the acceptable offering?
That he might ask whether you could bring it together, your hearts as unified as your actions.
Instead, that which had crouched outside was welcomed in, and he invented murder.
He who would not spill blood on the altar spills it in defiant rebellion in the field.

You experienced a momentary blackness, but that was just a threshold.
You opened your eyes to eternal light.
He was the first murderer.
And you, from whom there is no recorded word, left a testimony of faith that speaks forever, the first martyr.