What Are You Good At?

Do I care about certain things?

WHAT AM I GOOD AT?

Look, I can ‘wrap’ presents. I simply don’t want to. It is nowhere close to my gifting. It’s one of those things in our lives-my life, I don’t like to do. Whoever came up with ‘gift bags’ deserves a medal. I don’t go and buy them, let me be clear. I keep the ones I receive, or I use a nice Target grocery bag. You can’t see through those like you can a Fry’s bag.

I CAN PICK OUT STUFF

I am pretty good a gift selection. Recently, I hit a home run with a gift for my grandson and if you look closely, you can see a little of it in the picture. Sure, it’s Christmas paper used for a birthday, but it was either this or wedding gift wrap. I threw out the comics from the newspaper so I was left with, well, this.

Hey, its festive.

Prioritize!

There are so many things on the list of things to make lists for, I have to prioritize, and gift wrapping is not it. Could I make it look like it was wrapped by one of those little elves at the big box stores you pay big money to make the seams all match and the little gold dingle-things hang just so? Sure, but who the heck wants to do that? I still have dishes in the dishwasher I need to put away and laundry to ‘fold’ from last week-or was it the week before?

WE SOMETIMES HAVE SOME ‘ATTITUDE”

So, I am just giving you a heads up, if you are on my ‘get a gift for this person’ this year, there might be a little, well, ‘attitude’ behind it. Just like my laundry and dishes.

Hey, they’re clean. That’s about all I can say.

We worry-a lot

I can spend so much time, this time of year, worrying about stuff. I can have a tendency to worry myself way beyond the level I need to worry about anything. Thanks to the magic of digital clocks, I know exactly what time of night I wake up-wide awake, thinking about those things. I am willing to bet God does not want us to worry about Aunt Madge’s scarf color to the point of waking up in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep. Why do I do that?

Paul, the author of a huge chunk of the New Testament, even wrote about himself-‘why do I do stuff I should not do, and not do the stuff I should do?’ I’m not sure there is an actual Greek word for ‘stuff’ but you get my meaning. If that guy has performance issues, you can bet I do.

The Evil One loves it.

SATAN HAS LOST THE WAR

Evil has lost the war because of what Jesus did on the cross. He bought me. I am writing to you as a slave to that. I am also writing to you as a man white as snow, cleaned beyond perfection. Even though this afternoon, I might commit a sin-or three. There is nothing I can do which will have God turn his back on me–nothing. I will-forever-be tempted and lose many of those battles, but God, through his son, lives in me.

I will forever be a work in progress. Every day, I find myself coming closer and closer to my Dad who, by the way, created the universe. My Lord-Jesus, whom, by the way, is my adopted brother, told his Dad, ‘send me to buy him.’ Why would I not want to follow that? I know when I do, the gift(s) God has given me will be used. They just will. With Christ in me, I have a gift to use, at least one.

However, sometimes I just don’t want to.

I love the novel Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo. If ever you want a Herculean read, this is it. It is the story of us. The hero, after being told he had been ‘bought,’ struggled to figure what it meant. He did not change right away. He was still the criminal in action and character. Then, one day, it did register with him. He was bought and made new. The rest of his life was trying to live that way.

That’s me-

-and, I’m guessing you.

So, when I wake and worry at 2:36am about something which during the day seems so, well, stupid, I see a chalkboard hanging in my room, worn from use and the chalk slightly rubbed with just a few words to remind me who has all of this.