Two Gifts

Have you ever given or lent someone something and then discovered a few weeks later that they haven't gone to the effort to take care of it?  Of course, you were probably a little annoyed.  But imagine it was something very precious to you, say a heartfelt gift or something expensive you had to save up to purchase.  You would be more than frustrated, you would be hurt and angry.

How, then, do you think God feels when we abuse the life He has given us?  From the very beginning, human lives were a gift.  Genesis 2 describes the intimate way in which God brought life to the pinnacle of His creation when it says, "He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living person."  It wasn't long before Adam and Eve abused the gift the Creator had given them, using it to disobey Him.  From that moment, the gift was tarnished, and the breathe God had given as a personal gift to each person was destined to slowly wear away.  Death had ruined the perfect gift.

But God's infinite love meant that He would restore His gift.  In his mind, the tarnished and shadowy form of life we received was not enough.  The powerful language of 1 Peter describes the beauty of God's next gift: "For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors.  And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver.  It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God."

One day, when the original gift of breathe has left us, we will receive the second gift of restored life.  Imagine the beauty of this moment, when the thing we once destroyed and misused will be brought back to its former glory.  This is the day that, knowingly or unknowingly, we all long for.  As Paul put it, "We want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up with life."

Each of us have been given life twice over, the question is will you take advantage of the gift you have now in a way that gives thanks to the Lord for what He has done.  How will you use the breathe God has given you-- to praise Him or to curse Him?  Will you simply waste it with cheap words and empty promises, or will you use it to bring life to those around you?  Simply longing for the future gift of eternal life is not enough, we must take advantage of the life we have been given now, so that one day, we may stand before God and hear His voice acknowledging the care with which we have treated His gifts: "Well done good and faithful servant."

Comments

Popular Posts