daily devotional

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Gifts of Love

From guest Mary Jane Smith, thoughts on the gifts of Christmas:
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Christmas Past

I Cor. 13: 13 “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”

In my childhood years, we didn’t have lots of money, but our home was filled with lots of love.  I remember that particular Christmas vividly because all I wanted was a Shirley Temple doll (all the rage that season, and for many years to come).

Christmas morning dawned and when we were allowed, I raced to the tree, sure as only a child can be, that the longed-for doll would be nestled under the boughs of the Blue Spruce.  When I opened that large box, I was shocked to find a “grown-up” doll with an entire wardrobe of clothing, accessories and shoes.  Another large box contained a stylish wooden clothes rack.  I vainly struggled to hide my disappointment.

I learned a great deal about the true meaning behind the “exchanging of gifts” that year.

Mom & Dad took me into their arms and explained that it had been a tough year for everyone, and Shirley Temple dolls were very expensive and not every family could have one.  They told me they had found a beautiful doll that needed a home with a child who would truly love her.  Mom said she had made the clothes, hats and purses for her when I was asleep.  She also let me know that the clothes rack had been fashioned by Dad so there was a nice place to hang all the lovely dresses.  I named the pretty Horseman doll “Holly”, in honor of the season she came to live in the Smith household.

Over the years, I have thanked God many times for wise and loving parents who saw the necessity of modeling a life of honesty, integrity, and self-sacrifice. They gave us the gift of giving us what we needed rather than what we wanted.  Much like God the Father that first Christmas, Who gave us His Son because we needed Him, not because we wanted Him!

Mom and Dad have had many Christmas celebrations with Jesus in Heaven, but I still miss their wisdom and example.  I will always remember the year Holly came to stay.  It was one of the best Christmases we ever had, not because of what we received, but because of the love of the giver!

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Mary Jane Smith lives in Florida and will be guest posting again on New Year’s Day.

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Read The Tag Again this Christmas

“Merry Christmas.”

The gift is laid into your hands. A small, flat box. It doesn’t look like much. Doesn’t weigh much. Isn’t even wrapped as you expected.

The tag on the top says,

“Because I love you, and because I knew you needed this.”

Inside is a check written out to you, with numbers bigger than anything you’ve ever seen before. All you’ll need to do is deposit that slip of paper, and you can pay off all the debt your living has piled up plus you will have all you need for the future. You’ll never have to worry about resources again. Just deposit it. It’s yours.

Because the giver loved you and knew you needed it.

Now I know that this little story is not quite a perfect story of Christmas. There are many other things that most of us need and long for, things that cannot be bought with any amount of money. But this does illustrate exactly what happened on the night we now commemorate as Christmas: someone you did not even know at the time gave you a gift, because he loved you and because you need it.

That gift is
release from your prison,
the gift of sight,
a wonderful counselor,
a mighty God,
a father who supplies all you will need,
and a sovereign who holds all the keys to peace.

The gift makes it possible for you to climb out of the hole of debt you thought you’d never be able to escape.

The gift opens the door for you to have and enjoy everything that was previously out of your reach.

The gift makes possible all that you long for but that has always seemed impossible.

You could work all your life, but you know you’ll never earn this.

You also know you’ve never done anything to deserve this.

But this gift is placed in your hands now.

I hope you open it, savor it, delight in it,

and let it change your life. 

Because you are loved. And because He knows you need it.

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Chariots of fire surrounding you

Let us imagine what that morning must have been like.

They wake up in the hill country of Samaria, in the small town of Dothan. The servant, out on an early morning errand, is stunned by the sight of chariots and foot soldiers everywhere. The enemy has moved into place under the cover of darkness. These are the troops of the king of Aram, who has been attempting raids on towns in Samaria, trying to break the country bit by bit.

The servant runs back home to report the situation to Elisha. “Sir, what will we do?” Dothan is under siege. It is not clear if Elisha and his servant know that these soldiers are here to capture Elisha, or if they simply assume that the enemy is attacking the town, as it has tried to do with other towns. They do know, though, that the enemy forces are powerful, they are everywhere, and there is no apparent way of escape. It looks like they’re doomed to capture or destruction.

“What will we do?”

Elisha is not afraid. “We have more on our side than they have!” he declares.

And then he prays. Not for God to come and help them. No, he prays for the young man. He asks God to open the young servant’s eyes to see the truth of their situation. “And let him see!”

The LORD opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire (2 Kings 6:17 NLT).

Oh, Lord, open our eyes and let us see!

Let us see your constant watch over us. Scripture holds so many reassurances that the eyes of the Lord are constantly on those who rely on His love and His ears are always open to our prayers. I just discovered another one recently; 2 Chronicles 16:9 says the Lord is continually looking throughout the earth, looking for hearts devoted to Him so that He can strengthen them. He is there, constantly.

Let us see the power with which you protect us and provide for us. Chariots of fire? Who knows? Are there angels fighting for us in the spiritual realm? We have Scriptures that would indicate this is happening. But God also sends his “angels” in human form—people sent into our lives at just the right time for the purpose of strengthening, encouraging, teaching, and supporting us. They are—just like heavenly angels—special representatives sent by God for a certain purpose. Prayer warriors might very well be, in God’s eyes, driving chariots of fire into the thick of the battle. (I like that image.)

Psalm 18 is a great picture of God tearing open the heavens and coming down Himself to rescue one who depended on His help. God has done that for you and me! He has torn open heaven, and He not only came down to rescue us but He comes to live with us. God comes to abide with us. We abide in Him. He comes and makes His home with us and we share a life together. He tore the heavens open one night in Bethlehem, coming to rescue us and to share His life and kingdom and power with us.

We cannot despair, even when the situation looks grim to our blind eyes. We cannot feel helpless or hopeless when faced with enemies so strong they seem unbeatable. We cannot, because Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid of any trouble you face in the world. Trust me.”

What would this day look like if we could see clearly the chariots of fire surrounding us? What if we could have just a taste, one wee sip, of the might of His power at work in our lives?

Today, I pray for you and for me—not for His help in what we face or victory in our battles, but I pray: Lord, open our eyes and let us see!

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Thanking God … And Friends

Today’s guest post focuses on hospitality, something that abounds during the coming Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. Mary Jane Smith expresses her appreciation and thanks for her friend Joanie’s gift of hospitality and sharing of her bounty.

So I offer a challenge for this week of Thanksgiving: as you thank God for your blessings, include thanks for the special talents and passions He has given to each of your friends and the many ways those talents enrich your life.

Then, make a point of thanking your friends and telling them how their gifts have brought you comfort, encouragement, and joy.

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Hospitality

I Peter 4: 9  “Use hospitality one to another without grudging.”

The first time Joanie invited me to dinner with her family, I quickly found out that this was not a picnic-table-style affair.  Joanie loves to entertain, and she loves to entertain with style.  Her table was set with matching cloth tablecloth and napkins.  The centerpiece was a stunning floral display that she had created (hues of the seasonal display outside).  Everything, and I do mean everything, was coordinated for optimal visual enjoyment — candles, crystal, china, and cutlery.  The visual display paled when compared to what she served us:  breads, salads, entrees, multiple side dishes, and desserts.  All sumptuous pallet pleasers.

Joanie and I are decorative painters, and our methods of implementing our art are vastly different.  Over the ensuing years our friendship deepened.  She has become the little sister I always wanted.  About our art connection, she will laughingly say that she helped me to speed up and I helped her to slow down and enjoy the details.

Joanie is employed full-time as an Executive Assistant for a large corporation in our area of Florida.  Even though she has a schedule jam-packed with obligations, she always finds time to share her baking, canning and cooking with family and friends (my personal favorites are her Strawberry Jam and her Pickled Beets).  Many “goodie bags” have come home with me over the years that have nourished me well into another week. Even when we were not celebrating a special occasion, her food and decorations were spectacular.  However, when she really wanted to celebrate – the visuals and the meals would be outrageously extravagant.

When I think back over the gatherings around her tables (yes, that is plural – one formal, one casual, and of course one on the patio), the words that come to my mind are abundance, hospitality, and love.  Joanie genuinely enjoys showering family and friends with her awesome gifts of food (and her design talents).  Every recollection of the wonderful times of fun, laughter and fellowship around her tables brings with it a sense of peace and benediction. I am just sure that the same feeling will be part of the celebrations we will have around the Lord’s Table when we finally get home to heaven.

Hospitality to me means abundance, and it means giving with love.  If that is not a description of the life of my beloved friend, I do not know what it would be.

Heavenly Father, 

Provider of our daily bread and sustenance, thank You for allowing us the precious comfort of friends who portray for us the true meaning of hospitality by their gifts of time, talent and love.  Thank you for these precious earthly reminders of what Heaven will be like, and what You have in store for us. 

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Mary Jane Smith lives in Florida and will be guest posting again at Christmas and New Year’s.

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“It’s going to be good!”

When I was a little girl, eternity looked pretty boring to me. Was life with God going to be like one long church service? No good books to read for hours? No horses to ride? No creeks to play in? No ball games? No friends to share with? Were we just going to wander aimlessly around heaven with nothing to occupy our hands and minds other than singing praises?

Frankly, the heaven in my imagination was so unappealing that I couldn’t summon up much enthusiasm for spending even a weekend there, much less endless time. But one thing I did know: heaven was preferable to the hell pictured by the preachers, so of course I must focus on heaven.

That was a young girl’s limited imagination. Now, many decades later, I still can’t imagine the great plans God has for His children. But I’m much more excited about stepping into them and discovering what He has in store for us.

Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure (1 John 3:2-3 NLT).

In these verses we have a promise that is far beyond the imagination of anyone, young or old. We can only look forward and say, “Wow. What will that be like?”

We will be like Christ. God began the process when He opened the way and invited us to come back to Him. He continued the plan when He adopted us as sons and daughters, siblings, if you will, of Christ. He gave us glimpses of the future when He sent His Son to model for us how to live out the life of His kingdom — pure, devoted to God, in close relationship with Him. And then God ripped open the limits of our earthly lives when He raised His dead Son to life, pulling apart the curtain to give us a peek and say, “This is your future too!”

As a guarantee of that future, He planted within us the beginnings of transformation. His own Holy Spirit is working as you read this, transforming, connecting you to your Creator and your God, the one who loved you so much He came into your world to rescue you.

And here’s the promise: the ultimate end of this process is that we will be like Christ.

That’s amazing to me for a number of reasons. My first thought is of how far I am—now—from being like Christ. I know I share His Spirit, but I also daily experience the war that still rages within, between my old person and the new person the Spirit has birthed and wants to grow.

Secondly, I wonder what it will be to be like our Lord. We will be like our God? That’s a bold statement. Yet we were created in God’s likeness in the beginning. He paid the price to bring His lost children back. He is now in the process of creating again — He’s established His kingdom and He is creating new lives in His people. And yes, this is the promise: His new creations will indeed share in all that Christ is and has!

I do not yet understand how seeing Him “as He is” will complete the transformation, but I suspect that knowing Christ fully, being with Him face to face, will have a transformative effect on me. We know that even now, the more time we spend with our Lord, the more He can change our minds, hearts, thoughts, and actions. Yet our sight is clouded. When we see Him clearly and when we are fully with Him, what exciting and incredible things will surely happen to all of us who love Him?

I take from this another promise: I will someday see His love clearly. I’ll be able to see it on His face and in His eyes and feel it in His touch and hear it in His voice, and I will finally understand the love that is so deep and wide and beyond my comprehension now. We know that in our life here, being loved has transforming powers. Perhaps knowing Christ’s love fully and finally seeing its depth will transform us completely. For now, it is enough for me to know that I will see Him and know, face to face, how much He loves me.

So, John writes, let’s work at keeping ourselves pure because we are headed for this exciting future. Of course John knew, just as we know today, that perfection before God is impossible—we still stumble and fall short of Christ’s purity and sinlessness. John knew this reality, and he reminds us (in chapter 1 verse 9) that God uses even our sin and confession to cleanse and change us, working toward the future promise of our complete transformation.

My little girl imagination had such narrow limits. Even now, my grown-up imagination can only go so far. But Scripture says that all of this Good News of what God is doing is so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching as it all unfolds.*

As one of my friends says, “It’s going to be good!”

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*see 1 Peter 1:12

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