Once upon a time, I came home from work just in time to see my 15 month old son right before his mother put him to bed. I was, of course, excited to see him for a few minutes before he was locked away from me in his room for the next 12 hours. His mother had him lying on his changing table as she brushed his hair, etc. He was also really excited to see me. Big smile on his face, he waived his arms while chanting, “Da Da!” And then a curious thing happened.
It wasn’t actually strange to me because he does it all the time, but from the perspective of a father, it seemed the silliest gesture. He immediately began searching around his changing table for objects to give me. He grabbed hold of his little baby toothbrush and held it out to me as a gift offering.
You see, he loves me, and had missed me all day and he wanted to show that love by giving me the finest present he had available to him….his baby toothbrush. He loves playing with this toothbrush himself, so what better gift could he give me?
I quickly told him, “Thank you!” But, as you might guess, I didn’t really care about the gift. I was just happy to be there with him. I was full of joy for the fact that we were able to spend a couple minutes of our time together. My wife then said, “He loves to give his Daddy gifts!”
And realization came. Once again, my son had taught me about the Lord…
All around the Christian world, there are Christians striving to present the best gifts possible to our Father in Heaven. In many cases, their work is wearing them out, but they want to present the best possible gift to Him.
Some favor gifts of service. They spend hours upon hours at soup kitchens or volunteering at hospitals.
Others favor religious work. Countless hours are spent at a church doing the things that seem to need going there.
Still others work hard to deliver spiritual gifts such as healing or prophesy. They work at perfecting these God given gifts as their service to the Lord.
There is some good in these things. Depending on the circumstance, all might be extremely nice. As can be a little baby’s toothbrush. But they are not what the Lord is wanting from you.
Your Father in Heaven wants time with you! That is His greatest desire in your life. All the things that you think you can do for Him are trivial things that He can easily produce. Everything in fact that you can give Him already in fact come from Him.
But only you can choose to Seek Him. To spend time with Him. To come to know Him as He more and more reveals Himself to you. This is His heart’s desire. And if you peel all the business and distraction away, this is your heart’s desire too!
I didn’t title this piece “Spend Thanksgiving with Your Father” to say that you should not spend it with your family on earth. Of course, the Lord created Man to be of and about family. It’s extremely important to Him. Whomever you are spending Thanksgiving with this year, love on them. And invite the Lord in that you can all share the closeness of family. It’s what He created you for!
Quick Side Note: Sorry about the lack of blog posts both previous and most probably coming after this one. Our two vacations end up sandwiching a time of sickness for our family and I didn’t have anything written in reserve to feed the blog. Hopefully, I’ll be doing some economic update videos in early December since my pile of reading is quite large. In the meantime, here’s the last set… 1) Europe Economic Update 1, 2) Europe Economic Update 2, 3) Europe Crises Explained, 4) World Economic Update, 5) US Economic Update, 6) US Economic Update 2, 7) US Economic Update 3, 8) Hyperinflation Signs, 9) Hyperinflation, Inflation, or Deflation?, 10) Gold Update, & 11) Gold & Silver Update.