Gifting From God

On this fourth Christmas of this four years series, spanning twenty years since the project was launched, I want to list a number of God’s gifts to me, in the context of everyday life.  These may, in some instances strike chords of humor or doubt, of sin or righteousness, of responses growing out of different readers’ interpretations of my word meanings.  I risk all that because I feel pressed to write the following in the belief that God is honored in my acknowledgments.  That honor is fulfilled in worship, obedience, and in the belief that God’s plan for life in faith is the best plan that could ever have been projected for me.  Any failure on my part, relative to his plan leading to amendments to repair self, was managed in the course of God’s providence to achieve his will in what becomes the miracle of ongoing life and its victory.

1. God is, and has gifted himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, identified as the Son of God.  2. God is, and he has recited the application of his promises by the Holy Spirit.  3. God is, and he has maintained his own integrity in the Father in the administration of God which is beyond the limits of mankind both here and likely hereafter.  4. God is, and gave his Church to advance and maintain the mission of Christ.  5. God is, and he has given Scripture as both a guide and a textbook for life and education. 6. God is, and provided an offering – from a broken spiritual condition to hope of life forevermore.  7. God is, and his creation of life in an otherwise dead solar system suggests that life is, in itself, proof of God in the life creation we know in his image.  8. God is, and uses formal education most fully in a Christian context.  8. God is, and afforded health and safety – in some instances that seem to indicate prayer miracles.  9. God is, and has permitted me to live nearly 100 years now to write to students, family members, and other readers about fulfilling Christian life and thought long in faith formation for me – over 80 years in biblical faith.

10. God is, and he gave me my mother, and a family focused in my wife of 57 years, and my four children with their families.  My children are evolving into retirement years, continuing lives of Christian faith and experience, carrying through on their own families and service to others.  11. God is, and I have fully valued other family members including those who have married into our family – or adopted.  12. God is, and gave me a congregation of friends and colleagues gracing my life – to varying degrees.  13. God is, and I have friends from churches, conference points, businesses and colleges I have served, maintaining communications through decades.  14. God is, and I have been privileged to travel the world in ministry, and my own country which remains at the top of a list of nations that are, for their citizens, rightly their preferences.  15. God is, and gave me food, clothing and shelter in a home warmed by the obvious love of all its members contributing to the good of family and community.  16. God is, and permitted me to live in an exciting time when serious persons can accomplish just about whatever they determine to be and do.

17. God is, and became my mentor in learning about the follies of mankind so to resist undue competition, celebrity, greed, privilege, selfishness, lust, and other human sins that fill a list, but countered by a practical righteousness that offered virtue and values.  If the values were violated, I found forgiveness and restoration to better context.  18. God is, and gave relief in periods of grief, poor performance, wrong thinking, and general reverses.  19. God is, and taught me the reality of solutions in thanksgiving, humility, humor, prayer, and acceptance of life as it expresses itself in nature.  20. God is, becoming better understood in the passing of time and the extension of experience interpreted in the terms of Scripture.21. God is, and permits me in the light of the context of Scripture to develop vision of that which he presently holds in abeyance for his children so that death loses its sting, and becomes like unto the transition of birth.  On the natal day I gave up all the comforts of the womb in the growth and learning that took place there, and entered another womb, of nature, to be developed in this transition to a place far in advance of this fine sphere where we are touched by hope expected in the next life experience – the death of earth is the birth of heaven – new challenges and opportunities – all divine. It is the Spirit of Christmas.  Thanks, God.