Being Content Hope Purpose

Waiting with Confidence

My dad was a huge fan of Christmas. Because of this fact, every year he had a contest with himself to see if he could outdo his gift-giving from the previous year. Now, before you get the wrong idea and start thinking that I was given ponies and other extravagant presents, his challenge wasn’t if he could give a gift of greater expense, but rather his goal was to somehow bless us to a further degree. Whether this was in the way that he surprised us with the present – hiding it until all the gifts were unwrapped  or in giving us something that we didn’t even know we wanted, he sought to demonstrate how much he loved his family by giving good gifts every Christmas.

Knowing this about my dad, it always made the Christmas season full of eager anticipation. We often didn’t know what blessing would lie in wait for us, but we knew that whatever my dad had plotted and planned, that it would be good. After all, he loved his family dearly and this is just one of the many ways he showed it.

In the Christian life, I think some of the most difficult times are when we are waiting on our Heavenly Father to reveal what good things He has planned for us. Like a child waiting for Christmas morning, we don’t know what lies ahead in those unwrapped boxes. Sometimes, we spend so much time worrying and struggling with the anticipation of the unknown, that we forget that we can approach those times confidently, just as my sister and I approached the waiting gifts underneath the Christmas tree. Because although we may have to wait to find out what’s in store, we know that our Father desires to bless us and give us good things (Matthew 7:11).  We also know that just as my dad plotted and planned for the perfect Christmas unveiling, that God is actively working to bring about His purposes in our life (Romans 8:28; Philippians 1:6) . Waiting then becomes not a time of frustration for the lack of clear direction, but a time of eager anticipation for the good gifts that God has in store. And when we take hold of this, we can wait with confidence knowing that when we unwrap the presents, we’ll find hidden treasures and blessings that we didn’t even know we needed.

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Hope

The Great Exchange

A few years ago, I wrote about a trip to London and a moment that forever changed my view of Christ. Being an American, I did not grow up with the reality of royalty as a part of my everyday life. Kings and princesses were the things of fairy tales and Disney movies, and so many of the titles that we use to describe Christ weren’t as readily meaningful to me as they would be to someone who was accustomed to the presence of a monarchy. However, standing outside of Buckingham Palace and realizing that the King of the Universe had died for me, when normally it was the subjects who were sacrificed for the sake of the Ruler, it was as if a brick hit me:

The King was killed.

The One who ruled was slayed.

For me.

It’s a moment that I often come back to in my mind, and it seems that the frequency increases during the Christmas season. Perhaps it’s because I’m reminded that not only did Christ my King die for me, but He also gave up His royal throne so that I may be saved. He gave up power, for weakness; He gave up majesty for lowliness; He gave up prestige for disregard. He left a place where He would never get tired, never cry, never hungry and never be without, in order to enter a place where all that would be His in abundance. He gave up answering prayers from Heaven’s throne, to offering prayers from the dredges of Earth. And He became dependent, reliant on the care of His teenage mother when He could of had angels at His very command.

It wasn’t a fair trade –  especially if you look at it from His perspective. We often aren’t willing to give up our place in line for the sake of another who is deemed undeserving,  but He gave up everything for people that couldn’t offer Him anything of worth in return. He became a baby – with all the inconveniences of infancy – for our sake. He left the throne room to reside in a manger.

May we in turn give our lives back to Him.

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