Gifts of God

God is love. The Bible is clear on that. One passage I’ve been reading is from one of John’s letters and the bit I’ve been looking at ends with the order to ‘keep yourself from idols’. It seems to jar. 

What do idols have to do with God being love, I wondered.

Following on from that, I considered how I can love life more than I love Jesus. Oh, not in my head but in the way I act and speak. But since life is a gift from God, can that be wrong?

Many idols start out as gifts. Life. Money. Jewellery. Children. Spouse. Talents. Maybe a car or a house. They start out as gifts but their importance in our lives can grow until they overshadow the giver. They become the focus rather than the love of either the person, or God, who gave us the gift. 

We live to worship God, not his gifts. They come our way out of the overflow of his heart, and so that we can share them with others. 

I’ve got a picture of worshippers, faces turned to heaven, arms reaching out, receiving gifts gratefully but allowing them to pile up around us in hills of blessing for others to receive, too. Our gaze is not distracted to the gifts but focused on the giver. 

For this, Lord, I need the essential gift of your Spirit, to help me maintain focus. Amen.

Targeted

There is a FarSide cartoon with a picture of a bull's-eye target being worn by a stag. I kind of feel that we may be wearing some sort of similar target at the moment, having been the victims of various sorts of scams in the last few months.

First there was the hacker who pretended to be one of us and got another member of the family to transfer significant funds into his own bank account. Never did get compensation for that.

Then another family member had a cheque stolen, details except signature erased with some sort of criminal’s special ink, rewritten for a much greater amount and cashed. The US bank compensated the loss right away. 

Then someone else got a letter from the bank enclosing a copy of a letter received by the bank setting up a direct debit amount of thousands to be transferred every year to a certain account. Fortunately that was nailed before any money had slipped away.

Now today, after a small credit card purchase online last night, that credit card has been compromised and someone tried to buy £500 worth of stuff from a department store this morning. The card company caught it in time. 

It doesn’t seem as if any way of dealing with money is safe. Cash is, if you don’t get your pocket picked or your handbag stolen. 

Are there more scammers out there now or is it just us? Have we just been caught in the crosshairs for some reason? 

Boy I tell you what, if it’s a choice between loving God or money I know which way I’m going. God is faithful and dependable and can’t be stolen away. Not so money.