Mark 11:1-6
My maternal grandfather used to tell a story of working as a young man on a crew of rough, rugged laborers. They would often eat breakfast together. Manners were few, and if someone wanted an extra biscuit, they would just grab one off your plate. So the men got into the habit of spitting on their biscuits to protect against theft.
My question to him was, "If they were so rough, why would spitting on your biscuit stop them?" But I digress.
Remembering this story recently reminded me that we might have a habit of spitting on our own biscuits, in a manner of speaking. We protect what is ours. We don't want to share or make our resources available to others. Worse, we might even spit on our biscuits to keep them away from God.
Ideally, anything we have should truly be available for God's purposes; we should either contribute our resources or allow them to be leveraged. We should behave like the owners of the colt in this Palm Sunday story from Mark 11:1-6.
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”
They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go.
What's interesting is that the colt's owners never get the full story of why the colt is needed. All they know is that the Lord needs it, so they let it go without truly knowing if they'll ever get it back.
Similarly, we don't need to know the reasons why God needs us to give of ourselves in some way. We simply need to obey and trust that God's purposes are greater, and there's a possibility that our colt might be returned in some fashion. Spitting on our biscuits is selfish; may we root out our selfishness and be open to opportunities to give.
This scripture is used in my latest podcast of The Top 11 Themes of Jesus. In this final episode of the season, I examine the ways in which Jesus expressed prophecy or spoke as a prophet to Israel. To listen, search for "Cecil Taylor Monthly Podcasts" on Apple, Spotify, Audacy, YouTube and Podbean, or visit CecilTaylorMinistries.com/free-content to find links to all those podcast locations.