A gift that cannot be taken away.

I recently learnt the lesson, not to allow a toddler aged two and half, to pick up a Christmas cuddly toy hand puppet in the supermarket, allow him to play with it for a bit, put it in the trolley and then expect to be able to wrap it up for Christmas. That was the plan. However, a few screams and a good number of cries of ‘doggy dog…I need my dog..’, ‘but its Christmas…’ ‘Where’s my dog gone’ etc later, I decided – let him have it. It was not I stress just a case of giving in, it occurred to me and I actually thought how does a two year old understand the logic. He gets a present given to him and then we take it away. That is going to be confusing for a toddler.

It made me think about the nature of giving and how gifts are given and are not usually taken back. I thought about the gift of salvation and the many gifts of God. How God’s Grace has set us free – it does not depend on us or our efforts or of any works on our part but only by what God has given us and through the death & resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Romans 5v15 “But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!”

God also wants to give us spiritual gifts to help us in our Christian walk and to build up both ourselves and the local church. They are a gift of Grace and cannot be bought or earned but are given by God through the Holy Spirit. It is very nice to be able to share in these gifts, it’s like we open the present and we all get different things, some receive the same, others not but it is all from the same box and all the gifts together make the present what it is.

God’s gift of salvation, his gift of life, once we are saved – we are saved, despite all the sin in our life, despite all the disappointments and failures, the times when we have forgotten to put Him first – cannot be taken away. We are his forever and it is this wonderful truth that really should make us put our hand in his and say you lead, I’ll follow.