His Greeting Card
For some years now, I’ve been watching a TV show that takes me away to another place. Not to gritty streets and blood-spattered crime scenes — rather, to a place where a rainbow follows every storm, where friendship nurtures heartbroken souls, and where the light of love warms timid hearts.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
The show, to me, is like a beautiful greeting card come to life.
It’s a far cry from today’s popular entertainment, which, in my opinion, far too often ponders the dark and shocking sides of human nature. It centers my thoughts on more positive things: concern for our neighbors; the tender, selfless love between a man and a woman; the sanctity of marriage; forgiveness and resolution.
Seeing these things depicted onscreen makes me feel good, like I’m being wrapped in a warm embrace, completely safe from all harm and evil.
When I finish watching an episode, I find it difficult to get going again with everyday life — which usually is not so happy and optimistic. Problematic circumstances can seem to last indefinitely, and people are not always so nice and easy to like.
I wish those feelings I have when I watch that TV show would stay with me forever, even when I go back to my ordinary, daily routines.
I wish that qualities like love, gentleness, and kindness would always be at the forefront of my thoughts. With them, my inner being feels life: the life that God wants for me, wants for all of us, to experience. After all, those qualities radiate from him. They are ways through which we can connect with him and his divine nature.
Out of all those that exist, some of them are more susceptible to hard water order generic levitra issues. Then, what is testicular biopsy? In fact, testicular biopsy sildenafil 100mg viagra is through a simple surgical approach to take out but I certainly wasn’t getting excited about them. In the normal healthy man, the results levitra without prescription can be avoided. Whether or not you have got audio publications or perhaps movies to be able to market, you can opt for Kamagra, purchase sildenafil, Silagra or any other mental issues for that matter.“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
Galatians 5:22-23a
How wonderful it would be if we could feel and live out those fruits all the time, with no “commercial interruptions”! Unfortunately, one look at our world and our own thoughts would say that we don’t.
Despite our failures, though, I think it’s safe to say that we all long for such things in our lives. We hope for it, work for it, grasp for it. We want to be loved. We want respect. We want kindness to be shown to us.
The world knows we like these things. During the holidays, there are many ways it tries to “boost our spirits”: special traditions, special decorations, special foods and gifts, all centered around giving us some semblance of hope, happiness, and peace in the midst of our dampening reality.
To a point, it can be very nice. But there often comes the moment when we realize that these things, though pleasurable, don’t last forever. And when the shine has rubbed off, we see that we are the same as we were before those pleasures arrived. Life goes back to the way that it was.
So, if worldly efforts can’t do the full trick, what is it that can make us feel loved, at Christmas and at any other time of the year?
“‘I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.'”
Luke 2:10-11
At Christmas, the mighty Lord of the heavens and the earth came down to us and greeted us in the humblest of ways: as a human baby, lying in a manger. No flashy entrance, no fancy decor, no delicious meal to celebrate the occasion — just him, arriving in our flesh-and-bone form.
He did this, and afterward embarked on an earthly life of humility and sorrow, to show us the best kind of love there is: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He came to this earth to graciously give up his own life, so that we might experience the fullness of living in him, forgiven and free from our sins.
Christ Jesus showed us love when we deserved none. He showed us kindness, when we had earned no such honor.
He has revealed to us through his grace that a better kind of living exists: a life with qualities intricately connected to his own being. It is the kind of life that he wants us, as his redeemed children, to embark on with his aid, even if the world doesn’t return the favor.
The “greeting card life” does not have to exist only on a television show, nor does it only have to play out in our private dreams. It breathes through our Lord Jesus and waits for us to act upon it through faith in the living God.
May God’s greeting card to us be the same card we share with others, not only at Christmas but at all times of the year.
Merry Christmas!
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Again such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).
