Good Gifts

Starting in verse five of the eleventh chapter of Luke, Jesus tells us to be persistent in our pursuit of what we want from our Father in heaven. I have always loved the rhetorical question that Jesus asks us, if even sinful people know how to give good gifts to their children, how great will the gift be from our Father in heaven?

Most of us are familiar with Ted Turner, the cable television millionaire. Turner, at the American Humanist Association banquet, where he received an award for his work on the environment and world peace, openly criticized fundamental Christianity. He said, "Jesus would be sick at his stomach over the way his ideas have been twisted." He went on to say, "I’ve been saved seven or eight times. But, I gave up on it, when, despite my prayers, my sister died. The more I strayed from my faith, the better I felt!"

Most of us have had loved one’s be sick and in some cases, die. Ted Turner, like most of us, require that God operate on our schedule and according to our wants.

Life, itself, is cruel.

When we are in the tough spot of losing someone we love, like Mr. Turner did, we put all of our past and future faith in flux, relative to the outcome of that one particular event. In times like that we are vulnerable and say things that we believe separates us from our God and our faith and if pride was a fast car, we jump in it and get as far away from our original position of faith, all the while mocking it at excessive speeds and distance.

The problem is that, while in the process of trashing God and rejecting faith up to that point, we fail to remember the many good things and blessings that He has put in our lives. Many of those blessings are placed there by God so as to give us comfort in times of sadness and discomfort. Because we choose to be hurt, we can fail to receive the comfort value from those things that God has provided. As a result we can view those blessed things through prideful vision and chase them away or destroy them. This action just adds to our feeling of separation from our Heavenly Father.

We simply can’t give God blame for what goes wrong in our lives without first giving Him credit for what has gone right. When we ponder the amount of good things that He has put into our lives, we may then question what we don’t understand and find comfort in the words found in this chapter of Luke.