Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor
steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:20 KJV
Yesterday we began to put away the gifts from under the Christmas
tree. It was indeed a very nice Christmas. As I looked at the pile of gifts I was reminded
of these verses. I wondered if we had again put too much importance on gift giving at
Christmas.
Truly the best gift was the Child given to us at Christmas 2000 more than years ago. In time many of
the gifts received for Christmas will be forgotten, broken, and worn out. I'm glad that
Christ is everlasting. I'm glad that He is always the same, yesterday, today and forever.
God -- and our relationship with Him is the one thing we can depend on FOREVER.
pbb
One is happy in the world only when one forgets the world..
—Anatole France
December 27
"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him" (John 3:17). What blessed comfort it is to know that God sent His Son to save us, not to disapprove of us. Would that our relatives and friends did the same for us–and would that we did the same for them.
Jesus said "Then neither do I condemn you-. . . .Go now and leave your life of sin" (John 8:11). He even wrote in the dust the sins of the Pharisees, who were so ready to judge this woman. "If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins...who could stand? But with You there is foriveness...." (Psalm 130:3,4); "[Love] keeps no records of wrongs" (1 Corinthians 13:5).
Do I only serve God when I am in good
company, or when religion is profitable and respectable? Do I love the Lord only when
temporal comforts are received from his hands? If so I am a base hypocrite, and like the
withering rush, I shall perish when death deprives me of outward joys.
Christian, God has not left you in your
earthly pilgrimage to an angel’s guidance: he himself leads the van. You may not see
the cloudy, fiery pillar, but Jehovah will never forsake you. Notice the word
shall-"The Lord shall guide thee."
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The
Sins of the Father
There is a popular school of thought ... that violently resents the operation of time upon the human spirit. It looks upon age as something between a crime and an insult. Its prophets have banished from their savage vocabulary all such words as adult, mature, experienced, venerable; they know only snarling and sneering epithets such as middle-aged, elderly, stuffy, senile, and decrepit.
With these they flagellate that which they themselves are, or most shortly become, as though abuse were an incantation to exorcise the inexorable. Theirs is neither the thoughtless courage that "makes mouths at the invisible event," nor the reasoned courage that foresees the event and endures it; still less is it the ecstatic courage that embraces and subdues the event. ...
Such men, finding no value for the world as it is, proclaim very loudly their faith in the future, "which is in the hands of the young." With this flattery they bind their own burden on the shoulders of the next generation.
-- Dorothy Sayers in The Whimsical Christian. Christianity Today, Vol. 33, no. 3.
Merry Christmas
Christmas Quotation, Fact and Inspirations will remain online through
Friday 12/29/00.
Today's Devotion
...
...and by his light I walked through darkness! JOB 29:3 NIV
The
Sky
by Pat Nordman
"God called the expanse
`sky.'"
Genesis 1:8 NIV
When our sons were little I used to take them down to the pond near our house and let them
play there. When I felt it was safe enough, I would lie back for a few seconds and look at
the sky. I've always thought that looking at the expanse somehow put hurries and worries
back where they belonged. The sky was boundless and swallowed the minutiae and minutes
into the larger picture of God's enduring love and concern for every single part and pang
of life. After a time the endless diapers and dishes and dirt didn't seem so terribly
important after all, not in the sunlight of the slowly moving and lofty white clouds.
I even used to look for messages! Clouds have always fascinated me, and they take some
unusual shapes that can stir the imagination. One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 104,
particularly verse 3: "He makes the clouds his chariot..." When I would
cloud-gaze, I would see a chariot and take off–and then the little ones would quickly
bring me back to unadorned reality. But even those few seconds of fantasy helped me to
face stark life again.
Sometimes a storm cloud darkens our horizon. But I've noticed through the years that the
most beautiful sunrises are behind the darkest clouds! Many times I have ob-served the sun
rising on stormy mornings and been awed by the aura and I'm again reminded of that
precious promise to Noah in Genesis 9:13, "I have set my rainbow in the
clouds..."
I recommend looking to the sky when we lose sight of priorities. Somehow a glance at the
universe of sky whittles reality down a bit to just how important something is. When life
and its demands, both its petties and profundities, overwhelms us, glancing at the sky
brings peace, serenity, a feeling that when we bring our eyes back to earth, to the
horizontal view of things, all will be in place again. Vertical gives us a perpendicularly
new view of our life and its abundant blessings as well as responsibilities.
The
sky was boundless and swallowed the minutiae and minutes into the larger picture of God's
enduring love and concern for every single part and pang of life.
