Is it just me or do you also have difficulty getting things back after you have loaned them out? If I had kept records through the years I’m sure I would have less than a 20% return rate. That 20% would be money. Books are something else. I don’t understand how really good, honest, trustworthy people can see a book on their table and not have a compulsion to return it. Alas, I have adopted the concept that once something is loaned, it’s gone. It is always a serendipity if it returns. All of which, reminds me of John 3:16.
God did not loan us Jesus. He gave Him to us. He is ours and we are His. He didn’t come with a library card dated return by 31 AD. He wasn’t a loaner because we were being repaired. We were totaled. We needed something permanent. Now here’s where it gets really good. We were given the top of the line. This was a gift that couldn’t get any better. Just read here from Hebrews 1 to see what an extra-ordinary gift we have received. “God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high: . .”
That tiny baby in Bethlehem was Emmanuel from the moment of His conception. God did not prepare a vessel and fill it at birth. It was God Himself from the very beginning.
Written by Roger Bothwell on December 16, 2016
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