Dates & Raisins

1 Chronicles 16:3 Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each Israelite man and woman. 

Thank you gifts can be a warm part of being grateful for an individual’s contribution to the whole. Verbal thanks are important. Too often even words don’t get expressed enough. But a thoughtful small gift can cement the thanks in something tangible.

In the military these small gifts become memory placeholders. You can look around the house and see these small gifts and remember those moments of service and sacrifice. They enrich the current life with the richness of the past.

We also have boxes in the garage with extra gifts that don’t rise to the merit of being seen every day! Not every moment in the past has the same level of worthy-to-be-pondered today. So they stay in the boxes.

In our text King David has established a place for the Tabernacle to be set up in Jerusalem. He has successfully overseen the transfer of the Ark of the Covenant to its new place and he has led a great celebration of that event.

And as the people are getting ready to leave and return to their own homes, David passes on some gifts to them. He gives them bread, dates and raisins.

Bread, dates and raisins don’t seem to my sensibilities to be the greatest gifts. Do they seem that way to you? I thought so. So why these gifts?

I think all three represent the abundance of the land they have come to claim as the LORD’s. Bread is a very practical gift. As they traveled back to their homes, they would need something to sustain them on the journey. Remember, this is before drive up windows.

Dates and raisins represent the best fruit nature has to offer in that climate. They didn’t have northern fruits like apples and peaches. Besides, apples and peaches don’t survive longterm. They need to be eaten fairly soon after picking.

Dates and raisins take time to prepare. They take effort to produce cakes of them. They must be dried just right or they will spoil. They can then be used to flavor many different foods. Just add a little bit and the flavor comes forth.

One of the traditional Christmas gifts from years past was the ‘fruit cake.’ It is a much maligned gift, the butt of many jokes. But it is a very practical gift. It lasts almost forever. Unlike other cakes, it is dense and dry, enabling it to not mold quickly. And good ones are fairly costly, made with so much dried fruit.

So the gift of bread, date and raisins was a rich blessing to those who came for this moment in Kingdom history. It represented the best Israel had to offer.

It also represented the abundance that could be shared with those who hadn’t been able to travel. As they returned home, they could share this gift and tell the story of how the LORD has blessed the King and his kingdom. It enabled them to share in the goodness of the LORD.

What abundance do you have that you are sharing as a way to tell the story of the abundance of the LORD? Or have you become the Dead Sea, blessing flowing in but nothing flowing out?