Finding the Perfect Gift

 This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Zacharias, Ravi. The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019. [E-Book] Chapter 48: Finding the Perfect Gift

Opening Thought: There is an Alan Jackson song, a love song, which says, “That I love you like all little children love pennies”. There is a simple and wonderful joy that children get over things that adults would easily cast away without a second glance. But that love and appreciation for simple things is, sadly, something that seems to fade over time, only to be rediscovered late in life. In today’s devotional Zacharias talks about a child at Christmas, swelling in the anticipation and excitement of the experience, but only to find himself saddened when the opening of gifts stops, and the euphoria dies, and he is left with a feeling of emptiness. Somehow in the child’s age, he has lost that love for simple things, and has developed a love for want itself. This is a sad day for loss of the beauty of the childhood mind and spirt.

We have all heard stories of little children getting a toy as a gift and end up playing with the box, if only that mentality stayed with us all our lives. The box offers so much for the mind to explore, wonder, and imagine with. Not that a good gift cannot also do that, but the gift often limits the mind to a particular scope, but the box leaves it open to wonder. There is something about the simple things in life we often take for granted. Especially in the western world, where we have so many readily available benefits and liberations, we often can become like the child on Christmas, ripping through all the gifts, but not appreciate the gift or even the box, rather just the process of receiving, getting, and wanting, never actually knowing why we want, or what we want it for. And finally hitting a wall of disappointment when we run out of the parade of receiving.

The devotional begins with: James 1:16-18

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.

Second Thought: I think I have always found the perfect gifts to be simple. Any loving and dedicated married couple that has been together for a long time can tell you this. When you first find love there is a lot of passion, excitement, and novelty, and as a result, life feels great but it is more complex. When you have been together for a longer time, you begin to lose the excitement over the other person, kind of like the child losing the excitement over getting lots of toys. At first getting toys was the greatest thing, but then one starts to realize that it was the anticipation that was the exciting thing, not so much the toys itself. Like the honeymoon glow of a couple which fades to "meh" overtime.

The good toy, like a good spouse is always a great thing to have, but once the novelty wears off, what are you left with? Well that can depend on what you value. If all you value is novelty, getting, wanting and euphoria, you will be left with nothing and your marriage will be bound to end in disappointment. Couples will often go through a make or break point here, once the novelty wears off, but if they can come to appreciate the simple things in life, in each other, and most importantly – in life together, then the best parts of love come forward, it’s a love that is similar to how only little children love pennies, it is also a love that just belongs, like how the color red seem to just belong to the petals of a rose. It is a love of endurance, dedication and appreciation. 

There are many gifts and many forms of love that God is trying to teach us, and we need to be willing to learn them, but if we could somehow find a way of retaining the simple appreciation, a love of wonder and joy over the simple things in life, maybe we would have the fortitude in spirit to bring a greater fulfillment of all love to the wider world, by the Spirit.

Continual Work: Ask yourself, what is something in life that you love like only little children love pennies? How can that help you to come to terms with how you love the world and love God?

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: Something that I have always love like little children love pennies is rain and thunderstorms. As it in June as I am writing this, we should be coming into so late spring and early summer storms soon, and I always get a humbling joy, the same joy I would have when it stormed when I was a child. I hope for some good storms this year, as long as everyone is safe of course.  

Prayer for your day: Lord, like the blue in the sky or red on a rose, some things just belong to each other. Let us belong to you in this way, and let our faith belong to us in a way that speaks to our very beings as superfluous to a life of faith. Let this understanding touch something deep inside us, and let Your truth be known, that though love, Your gift to us, is simple, it is also powerful, it shapes the wonder of a child’s mind, and holds us together in our twilight years. Let this day’s prayer be a testament to Your simple love, because by that love I know you give me a heart of my own, shaped by Your will and glory. Amen

Artistic Close: There are two country songs which inspired some of the thoughts and words for today’s devotional – here are some YouTube Links for these songs.

Like Red On A Rose – Alan Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd9DKY-0PI0

 

The Simple Things – Hey Arnold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWsQ-03owSM

 

Still from Hey Arnold! Episode “Mr. Hyunh Goes Country”