The Giver and the Gift (December 15, 2014) |
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For when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation (Romans 5:10-11).
I shared the above verse this past week with a young man going through our discipleship counseling process. He was describing to me how he cannot see God at work in his life after praying so much to Him. He was focusing on what he thought God needed to do for him. When I shared this verse, he realized his focus was not on God Himself, but only what
God could do for him. He left our session with a renewed hope in God Himself and trusting the Father to conform him to the image of His Son in all circumstances.
This got me to thinking more about God the Father this Christmas season. The focus is normally, and rightfully so, on God the Son being born a babe in a manger by God the Holy Spirit through Mary. However, I am also captured this Christmas season by Father as the Giver of the Gift of His Son through the Holy Spirit.
I see the message of Christmas wrapped up with a red bow in the following Scriptural package:
But when the fullness of time had come, God (the Father) sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4).
When we receive a gift with very little attention to the giver, it really is not a gift, but is merely a temporary use of a resource we foolishly believe someone owes us. It is an insufficient fulfillment of a
selfishly perceived need that only God can fulfill. That resource will soon be discarded for the pursuit to continue for the next unfulfilling resource.
In contrast, when we truly receive a gift from a giver, we are humbled. We choose by faith to be humbled. And gratitude for the giver, and not just for the
gift, will always be our priority.
Following are my transcripts from two scenes from the 1971 movie, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story. It is a story of the Walton family in rural West Virginia during the depression. It is a story of a son, a mother, and a father. It is a story of a gift and a giver.
I am personally captured by these two scenes because of my desire to be a writer of the good news of Jesus Christ and my desire to be a son.
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John Boy with his mother Following is one of the opening scenes from the movie, a most poignant exchange between
a mother and her son.
Mother: "Are you hiding something in that bed, John Boy? Is it something you're ashamed of?"
John Boy: "Oh no mam!"
Mother: "Then why are you hiding it?"
Slowly, John Boy brings out from underneath his bed a Big Chief writing tablet, and hands it over to his mother. She takes a quick glance inside the tablet and immediately closes it realizing it is one of John Boy's personal journals,
and not a pornographic magazine she had previously implicated.
As his mother stands speechless while embracing the tablet next to her heart, John Boy sits down on his bed and begins to share his heart.
John Boy: "What's in that
tablet Mama? All my secret thoughts. How I feel and what I think about. What it's like late at night to hear a whippoorwill calling for its mate to call back. The rumbling of the midnight train crossing the trestle at Rockfish. Or just watching the water go by in the creek and knowing someday it'll reach the ocean and wondering if I'll ever see an ocean, and what a wonder that would be."
"You know Mama, sometimes I hike on over to the highway and just sit and watch the buses go by and the people in 'em, and I'm wondering what they're like and what they say to each other, and where they're bound for."
"Things stay on my mind, Mama. I can't forget anything...and it all gets bottled up in here in my
head and...and...sometimes I feel like a crazy man...I can't rest or sleep or anything until I rush up up here and write it down in that tablet."
"Oh, sometimes I think I really am crazy. If things could have been different, I could have done something with my life."
Mother: "Oh you will John Boy! You got a promising future!"
John Boy: "What I would've liked Mama...was to try to be a writer."
Mother: "Well, if that's what you
want, couldn't you still try?"
John Boy: "Oh no, not in these times. Anyway, it takes a college education to be a writer, and even if we did have the money, it wouldn't be right to risk it all on me. Anyway, I couldn't disappoint my daddy. You know he's got his heart set on me taking up a trade."
Mother: "He just wants you to know how to make a living."
John Boy: "Well, I sure could never do that scribbling things down in a tablet."
This scene comes to an end as the mother asks John Boy to venture out into the night on Christmas Eve after a heavy snowfall to find his father who is feared to have been involved in a severe bus wreck. The father had left home months earlier to find work during the depression. He was travelling back home on Christmas Eve on snow-filled roads to be with his family.
John Boy with his father John Boy could not find his father. However, that Christmas Eve night around midnight, his father miraculously showed up at home! He had used most of his pay check to buy presents for all 7 children and his wife. John Boy watched as his six younger siblings frantically opened their presents.
Then, the following poignant exchange occurred between John Boy and his father. Father: "Son, why don't you open yours?
John Boy then opens his gift. It is a set of new Big Chief writing tablets! His father lovingly looks at
his son as John Boy, with much glee and a little tear in his eyes, carefully holds his new tablets as a most precious treasure.
Father: "I wonder how word got all the way to the North Pole you wanted to be a writer?"
John Boy goes from looking at his new tablets to looking into the eyes of his father. John Boy: "Well, I guess he must be a right smart man!"
With the father and son gazing into each others eyes, John Boy's father offered his fatherly and loving advice. Father: "I don't know a thing about the writing trade, son, but if you want to take it up, you got to give it your best."
Still with the father and son looking at each
other, John Boy humbly and obediently responds to his father. John Boy: "Yes sir daddy." The mother then ushers John Boy's six younger siblings off to bed. John Boy is the last child to leave the living room to go to bed and, as he does, he walks by his father, still looking into his father's eyes, and says, John Boy: "Thanks daddy." John Boy as the narrator Years later, John Boy became an accomplished writer, but not as a result of the tablets he received that one Christmas Eve, but as a result of his father's love he received that one Christmas Eve. The movie ends with a grown John Boy narrating the end of the movie.
John Boy: "Christmas is a season when we give tokens of love.
In that house, we received not tokens, but love itself. I became a writer as I promised my father I'd be, and my destiny led me far from Walton's Mountain."
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I love the relationship between John Boy and his father who he called "my daddy." The Holy Spirit moves us to call out to our heavenly Father as "Daddy" (Romans 8:15), and as the Giver of "all our need according to His riches in glory by Christ
Jesus" (Philippians 4:19).
The Holy Spirit also moves us to behold Christ, as the Gift. As a result, we "are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Jesus was
always looking unto the Father. In John 5:19, Jesus said, "I only do what I see the Father do." Now, as we humbly embrace the Gift of Christ in us, He will surely lead us to also be looking unto the face of the Father as our Giver - our Father who embraces us!
Thanks be to God (the Father) for His indescribable gift (2 Corinthians
9:15)!
Jesus indeed is the reason for the season, but the Father is the reason there is this season!
Merry Christ-mas! Gregg |
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Journey in Christ, Inc. is a biblical, Christ-centered discipleship counseling, teaching, and training ministry with a heart to come alongside pastors and the local church in the Greenville SC area. I am a member of Holly Ridge Baptist Church in Simpsonville SC.
We have
three full-time staff members, one staff member trainee, six board members, one ministry assistant, and a multitude of ministry partners.
I would love to hear from you!
Contact me at (864) 483-3201 and/or gregg@journeyinchrist.org if you would like to know more how I can support you in your walk and ministry with Christ.
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