exchanging the Christmas gifts

Have you exchanged any gifts this year?

Today I received a gift my sister sent me. It was a perfect gift for me. She knows me so well and found just the right book to keep me busy for awhile. Her gift says that she knows me, sees me, and is confident enough of that to go out and get this for me.

Today we also began studying Romans in community. Chapter 1 talks of exchanges. My eye caught on that word. I kept thinking of all those gifts we give and receive. I thought of the real Gift we have been given.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son..."

In Romans and even today, "they" exchanged

• the glory of the immortal God for idols
• the truth about God for a lie
• natural sexual relations for unnatural ones

And God, who gives, gave them over...

• in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity
• to shameful lusts
• to a depraved mind

I thought about what the exchange says. I don't like this. It won't fit me. You don't know me very well. You don't see me. In our rejection of God, we state that to Him. I will not take death, this accident, or this event from your hand. I can't believe you would ask this of me. You don't see me. All these are lies given to us by the father of lies.

I want to continue in faith. I want to trust the Giver. I know that might seem crazy when the world around me falls apart. If I fall apart. But He has never lied.

This year I don't want to exchange His gifts.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'"