By Pastor Rex Hamilton I have a friend who lives in Orlando, FL and works as the head football coach for a large high school. His name is Andre and for several years, he and I played the re-gifting game. You see, he had received a rather cheesy ceramic angel statue as a gift and decided it would be funny to give it to me knowing I didn’t want the statue either.
Once when our family visited them on a vacation, I packed the statue in my luggage and secretly found an inconspicuous spot in their house to place it. It was weeks before he noticed it and promptly mailed it back to me!
When it comes to the greatest gift humanity has ever received in the birth of Jesus the Messiah, we find that along with his birth came the promise of peace on earth. By giving us His son, he gives us the chance to receive his peace. Shalom. Wholeness of life. Yes, in all the chaos and brokenness of this world, despite our own struggles and pain, we can know real peace.
But God doesn’t give peace separate from Himself, so we have to be willing to receive peace through Him. This means surrender and a willingness to have new life in Him...
This gift of received peace has immense value. Eternal value! It’s far from some unwanted present a friend gives us and we immediately seek a way to get rid of it. No, this gift of peace should be re-gifted to others because of its value and meaning to us. God’s peace isn’t meant to be hoarded, but rather, shared with those around us who desperately need to experience the comfort of God’s wholeness.
This Christmas, lets seek ways to re-gift the peace in God we’ve so freely been given! Who knows the eternal impact it may make...
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I, like many of you, love a great action movie full of stunts and special effects. Every once in a while a great film comes around and will buy it on DVD so I can watch it long after it’s left the theaters. Most of today’s movies come with special features on the DVD like “deleted scenes” or a “behind the scenes look” at how the special effects were done.
I never watch those features. Why? Because it erases all of my awe and wonder of simply enjoying the movie. I don’t need to know how the stunts were done. Rather, I just need to believe that somehow, someway they made something impossible look real and then I get the benefit of engaging in the story of the film.