The perfect gift

Pete, Judi, and me August 7, 1999

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father. – James 1:17 NIV
   
   
When I opened the card from my sons on Christmas Eve, I cried. I totally didn’t expect a round-trip airline ticket to Montgomery, Ala., where my brother Pete lives.
   
I haven’t seen Pete since our sister’s memorial service nearly 11 years ago. You never know what’s around the next bend, so it’s a crying shame that over decade has passed since I’ve spent real-time, face-time with the only sibling I have left.
   
But life gets busy, and a trip to Alabama was more of an item for the bucket list than the do-list—for more reasons than I just couldn’t find the time.
   
First, the expensive airfare. Second, after my last flying fiasco, I vowed never to fly again unless it was absolutely necessary. Third, we didn’t have a vehicle that was trip-worthy until last year, and a drive to the Heart of Dixie wasn’t feasible or affordable. There were too many other, more immediate needs and concerns.
   
But when I bought myself a used elliptical machine two weeks before Christmas, my boys had to come up with another gift idea for me.
   
It was my husband who suggested it. He knew my brother, who is 5 years older than me, has been dealing with health issues for several years, and the past couple of months brought a few scares.
   
So today I’m flying out of Pittsburgh—first class—for a one-week visit with my brother and his wife—and I’m not taking my laptop. Work is not on the agenda for the next week. I’m going to spend the time with my loved ones.
   
It’s the perfect gift. My boys have not only given me something I couldn’t afford, they have also given me the precious gift of time with my brother.
   
Time is an excellent gift. It requires sacrifice—giving of something that you can’t get back, something that costs nothing in dollars and cents, but is priceless in terms of value.
   
You give the gift of time:

• When when you stop what you’re doing and listen—really listen—to what someone is saying. 
• When you put away what you’re working on and play a game with your grandchildren, even though you’re on a deadline. 
• When you have lunch with a friend. 
• When you make a pot of soup for a neighbor who’s ill. 
• When you crochet afghans for each of your grandchildren. 
• When you make your son’s favorite pie from scratch. 
• When you make homemade noodles for your husband’s birthday dinner. 
• When you do something that’s on your wife’s to-do list so she can have time to do something she really wants to do. 
• When you stay with a young mother’s children so she can get some precious time to herself or go grocery shopping. 
• When you spend two weeks at your daughter’s home while she recovers from surgery.

   
Look at the list of birthdays and anniversaries coming up. Where can you give the gift of time?
   
   

Father, show me more ways to give the gift of time. Amen.
   

X-travagant God

The ABC’s of knowing God better: the letter “X”
                                                                                                   
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. –Lamentations 3:21–23 RSV
      
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. – James 1:17 NIV
      

“How much are you spending on me for Christmas this year?” my husband asked me last week.
      
I didn’t want to tell him I’d already ordered everything on his list. His list, by the way, is comprised of dog-eared pages in several Cabela’s catalogs with which we get inundated this time of the year.
      
So while DH was out vainly looking for a first day buck, I was online not so vainly spending bucks. I was supposed to spend only a third of what I did—that’s what he says he’s spending on me. But trying to pick and choose is too agonizing. It’s a lot easier just to get everything.
      
This seems to be our Christmas history—well, mine, anyway, because I’m the one who’s done the Christmas shopping all these years.

Jaime & Todd, Christmas, 1980

When the kids were little, I tried to get everything on their lists, too. The money was short, but seeing the look on their faces when they opened their presents on Christmas morning was a gift of its own. I wanted to be as extravagant as our budget allowed.
      
We have a heavenly Father who wants to be extravagant with His children, too. Only He can afford to lavish every good gift upon us—and He does. Oh, we don’t get everything on our wish list, but He gives us exactly what we need when we need it and in His way.
      
Some of His gifts we don’t even think about. Or maybe we don’t even realize we’ve been given them.       

Take, for example, His LOVE. It reaches to the heavens (Ps. 36:5), surrounds us (Ps. 32:10), never ceases (Lamentations 3:22), and is the reason He sent His Son to provide the way to heaven for us (John 3:16).
      
His FAITHFULNESS shields us (Ps. 91:4), “extends to the clouds” (Ps. 36:5) and continues through all generations (Ps. 119:90). 
      
His unlimited MERCIES—we receive them daily, fresh as the morning dew (Lamentations 3:22–23).
      
He supplies all our NEEDS, and He doesn’t skimp, either. He provides them “according to His glorious riches” (Philippians 4:19). Wow! All we have to do is ask (Matthew 7:7).
      
His GRACE, which is His daily care, strength, guidance, and favor. His grace is all we really need, for what we lack, He provides (2 Corinthians 12:9).
      
His WISDOM—Once again, all we have to do is ask: “If any of you lacks wisdom he should ask God, who gives generously to all, without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5).
      
Did you get that? He gives generously to all.

So go ahead. Make up that wish list—then watch your heavenly Father do what He loves to do—be extravagant with His child.
      
      
Forgive me, Father, when I whine and complain that I don’t have enough or I don’t have what I want. Open my eyes to the gifts You shower me with every day. Amen.

Special-Tea: Read Matthew 7:7–11

 
NOTE: For more examples of God’s extravagance, read about the miracles of the loaves and the fishes and see how many baskets of leftovers were gathered up (Matthew 14:13–21 and 15:32–38). Or the miraculous catches of fish in Luke 5:4–7 and John 21:4–6.

Forgotten gift

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith . . . it is the gift of God.  – Ephesians 2:8 (NIV)
     
     
I sat in the manager’s office as he perused my application for a line of credit. I was 20 years old, had just graduated from college, and moved to Punxsutawney, where I’d gotten my first job. After a couple months of loneliness—I knew no one in the area, and my social life was zilch—I decided it was time to purchase a television. So I went to Grant’s department store in town, chose one I liked, and applied for a line of credit.
     
That’s where I ran into trouble. I had no credit history. Oh, I was making payments on my car—a '67 Camaro Rally Sport—but my mother had signed the loan papers, so the loan was in her name, as was the credit for my punctual payments. I wouldn’t ask her to sign for me on this. After all, I was on my own now, right?
     
The manager was doing his best to help me.
     
“You don’t have any credit cards?” he asked.
     
I started to shake my head when I remembered—my dad, months before his death, had given me a Texaco credit card. “You might need this sometime,” he’d said. I put it in my wallet and forgot about it. Now I pulled it out and handed it to the manager.
     
“I’ve never used it, though.”
     
His face erupted into a huge grin. “It doesn’t matter. It’s in your name. It’ll work.”
     
I got my TV.
     
Sometimes we receive a gift we don’t think we need. We put it away for “someday” or recycle it—give it to someone who might use it. In the case of the forgotten credit card, I never planned to use it. But my father knew someday I might have an emergency and he wouldn’t be around. Without a lecture (Mom would have given me one), he quietly slipped me something I didn’t know at the time I would need.
     
My Father in heaven is the same. He, too, knows what I need before I ask (Matthew 6:8). Like salvation. Nearly two thousand years before I was born, He sent His Son to pay the penalty for my sins—and the sins of everyone who ever lived. He did this so I could spend eternity with Him. Salvation—being saved from the penalty of my sin, from the power of sin, and someday from the presence of sin—is a gift. I cannot earn it.
     
But how many do with the gift of salvation what I did with that credit card—put it away for someday and forget about it?
     
But someday always comes. Someday, in fact, is today (2 Corinthians 6:2).
     
Have you used the gift God has given you?
    
     
Thank You, Father, for patiently waiting for me to realize that I needed You—and the salvation You give through Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
     

     
Special-Tea: Acts 16:25-31; Ephesians 2:8-9

Extra “Tea”:  Romans 3:23-24; Romans 6:23; John 3:16; John 3:36; John 14:6; 1 John 5:11-12