Enjoy the Simple Gifts

 

“How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all … When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.”

—Psalm 104:24, 28

Out the children came: mouths open, tongues out, excitement showing on every face. I stood by the front door of the school doing my daily end-of-the-day bus duty. As though playing from some script, over and over again, the children ran out of school into the newly fallen snow with the same reaction: cries of delight, eyes skyward, they couldn’t have been happier.

The adults—teachers, aides, custodians, and bus drivers—reacted with far less joy. We complained and worried about the drive home. Snow offers a challenge and we found nothing so gleeful in it.

Thinking about those long-ago days, I wonder which group pleased the Lord more. God must have looked with pleasure, as the children enjoyed this gift He’d brought to an otherwise ho-hum school day.

As I watched the children’s reaction and delight, God reminded me of the many simple gifts we receive from His wonderful creation. And, I also remembered His kind and gentle way with children. God gives us the happy spirits of children to remind us of life’s simple pleasures, and to remind us of the beauty He constantly provides around us.

Watching the joy of the children, I breathed this simple prayer:

“Thank you, Lord, for revealing the beauty that I wouldn’t have seen except for these gleeful children.”

As we live through the gray, lifeless, even challenging days of winter, let us determine to look for the beauty and wonder that the children see. When we do so, we may find that we, too, can find enjoyment in God’s simple gifts.

 

 

Cruise Control

 

“In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”

—Proverbs 3:6

I know people who like using the cruise control in their vehicles. Not me! There’s something about trusting myself and my passengers to a computer that maintains a constant speed, as we rocket down the highway, that makes me very uncomfortable. From moment to moment, I would much rather manually control my own pace.

My attitude towards cruise control makes me think about our lives, as we travel with God “at the wheel,” so to speak. We often feel quite uncomfortable surrendering the controls to Him, too. Yet, there comes a time when He asks all of us to trust Him with the “steering wheel,” the “accelerator,” the “brake,” and all other “controls” we may have over our lives—especially when the road we are on in our lives isn’t clear, and when our visibility seems especially poor!

We are not alone in allowing God to take the control of our lives: think of Abraham, as an example. In Hebrews 11:8 we read:

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Now that’s giving up control! The Bible tells us of other times in Abraham’s life when he trusted God’s leading, even though it must have made more sense to do something else. We see the reason why we call Abraham the “Father of our Faith.” His faith in God controlled his actions, time and again. And, because of his trust in God, Abraham saw magnificent acts of God’s power and love.

When we read the account of Abraham’s life, we also clearly see that those occasions when he did not choose to obediently take his hands off the “wheel” of his life, and surrender to God’s control, were the very times that he faltered. The consequences of those few times when Abraham pushed God’s hands out of the way, and all-too-eagerly grasped the wheel for himself, have reverberated down through the pages of history, right up to the present day.

It always helps to remember the One who controls the “wheel.” While good driving for me may mean disengaging the cruise control, good faith means putting all we see and can’t see through the “windshield” of our lives totally in the control of our God. We can rely on His vision, His hearing, His wisdom, His reflexes, and, of course, His unfailing love.

Let us join together in learning to “cruise” through this life giving up control of our lives to the One who knows us the most and loves us best. God is the One whom we can always trust to see what’s around the corner of the road ahead. There are no accidents on the road He chooses for us. And, though it may seem rough, narrow, steep, and dangerous at times, it is always in our very best interest to leave the “driving” of our lives to Him!

 

 

Of Ill-Repute

 

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”

—John 1:46

“Abused,” “treated harshly,” “neglected,” “given a bad reputation,” “emotionally tormented,” “rejected”—each of these labels can far too often apply to someone for whom it seems all hope is lost. But with God, there is always room for redemption and restoration.

“Of the Sons of Korah.”

Have you seen that inscription as you’ve read through the Psalms? In fact twelve of the Psalms bear that heading. To see the point and the glory of those particular Psalms, it helps to know the history of these men: the Sons of Korah.

In Numbers 16, we read the story of a rebellion by some Israelite men in the Jewish camp traveling to the Promised Land from Egypt. Verses 1-3 tell us that they:

… became insolent and rose up against Moses. With them were 250 Israelite men, well-known community leaders who had been appointed members of the council. They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?”

Moses tried to reason with the men, to give them pause because of all that the Lord had done for them, and to warn them. Then, he called for them to meet with the Lord carrying their censers for incense. In verses 31-32, after Moses prayed and finished speaking:

… the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah’s men and all their possessions.

From that time on, no one forgot the judgment of the Lord on Korah and the other men. Yet, when we read in Psalms these creative songs of the Sons of Korah, we realize that God showed His grace to the family line. Even though they lived with the reputation of the terrible incident that had happened so many generations before, God used the Sons of Korah to glorify Himself and bless all those who, subsequently, have ever read their words. I like what the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice writes about this: ¹

For some reason the Sons of Korah were spared, and it seems from their later employment that, in gratitude to God and his mercy, they must have dedicated themselves to producing and performing the music used to praise God at the wilderness tabernacle and later in the temple in Jerusalem. This interesting fact is a reminder that there can be devout children of reprobate fathers, as well as devout fathers with reprobate children, and that no child needs to be kept from serving God because of his or her parents’ sins.

This story must hearten those who have lived, harboring a dark past, with remembrances of abusive or ungodly parents, or with remembrances of poverty and meaninglessness. God can take even the most damaged people and use them for His glory. Out of their brokenness, He can place the wonderful light of His divine presence, so that they gleam like shards of glass in the sunlight. Even Jesus had to live down the reputation of his hometown. Nazareth has been described as a place that:  ²

… stood in disrepute, generally attributed to the people’s lack of culture and rude dialect … [The people] had a bad name among their neighbors for irreligion or some laxity of morals.

God calls us to “redeem” those things in our lives ruined by sin—to “salvage” them, even as He has salvaged us from the penalty for our sins. We should rejoice in God’s ability to “make lemonade” out of all the “lemons” we have given to Him because of our unfaithfulness and our sins. He wants to show forth from our lives His powerful ability to transform that which others would condemn. Praise be to God!

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1 Boice, James Montgomery, Psalms: An Expositional Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996. Vol. 2, pp. 366-367.

2 Unger, Merrill F., Unger’s Bible Dictionary, Chicago: Moody Press, 1961. p. 779.