For over 50 years my wife and I have always shopped together for our weekly groceries. However, for the past month or so she has had to go without me. The unexpected plus side is each week she brings me a treat. B. F. Skinner would say I am being positively reinforced never to go shopping again. This afternoon she brought me a cherry Tasty Pie, a childhood favorite. But, it wasn’t just the price that has changed since I was a boy. It used to be flaky crust laden with cherries. Now it is a hard sugar crusted piece of folded cardboard containing about 4 or 5 cherries. Alas. But it was the love that came with it that mattered.
There is such joy in giving to someone you love, which brings me to Heaven’s response to Jesus on the cross. Most prominently there had to be horror at the extreme torture we heaped on Jesus. There also had to be revulsion and a desire to rescue Him. But, it was a gift. It was the grandest, most generous; most extreme statement of love ever expressed anywhere ever. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” When God gave us Jesus He made Himself poor. There was nothing greater. The Father emptied Heaven’s treasure chest as He restrained Himself from interfering.
When you love, giving is as natural as breathing. Today, 2000 years later, the Father continues to bless us. “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7. Never hesitate to ask. But don’t beg. He hears us the first time and His generous wisdom will prevail.
Written by Roger Bothwell on June 30, 2017
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