RICH!

Christmas 2006 is in Scotland for me. Most of the previous ones I have spent with family, but this year all of them absconded, leaving me homeless! (They’re in India—hopefully thinking of me frozen stiff and subsisting on peanut butter, while they’re enjoying a piping 85° F and engorging upon delicious festal South Indian concoctions!)

But I’m all set. Out of the kindness of their good hearts, taking pity upon this nomadic waif, demonstrating bounteous mercy to this starving bachelor, a fellow postgrad and his wife have invited me to their home for Christmas dinner. (Thanks, David and Angela!)

When I mentioned this invitation to a friend in Dallas a few days ago, she was relieved: “I’m glad you don’t have to stay at home by yourself. Everybody should have somewhere else to go for Christmas—to family, to friends ….”

Most of those who celebrate Christmas will be where they are wanted, welcomed, warmed, and watered. Ironic, isn’t it, that the one for whom Christmas is named, had no such place to go to?

How should a King come?
On a star-filled night an unlikely pair
Trudge into town, God's Son to bear;
And the only sound in the cobble-stoned street
Was the shuffle and the ring of their donkey's feet
And the King lay there in the virgin's womb,
For the Ruler of heaven, in the inn no room.
No coaches of gold, no purple-clad horsemen,
Just a babe in a manger, a few cows, and some oxen.
(Original version by Jimmy and Carol Owens, 1980)

No post-natal care, no newborn baby check, no proper baby clothes, no diapers, no shelter appropriate for a mother and child, no sanitary environment, no fireplace, nothing. Just a feeding trough.

For you know the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that though He was rich,
yet for your sake
He became poor,
so that you
through His poverty
might become rich.
2 Corinthians 8:9

And indeed, we have so become. Rich, because of a God …

… who has blessed us
with every spiritual blessing
in the heavenly places in Christ …
Ephesians 1:3

Rich, because of a God …

… who is able to do
far more abundantly
beyond all that we ask or think …
Ephesians 3:20

Rich, because of a God …

… who according to His great mercy
has caused us to be born again
to a living hope through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead,
to obtain an inheritance …
reserved in heaven for you.
1 Peter 1:3–4

Rich, indeed! And not just spiritually.

Now He who supplies
seed to the sower …
will supply and multiply
your seed for sowing and
increase the harvest …;
you will be enriched
in everything for all liberality.
2 Corinthians 9:10–11

God’s giving to us ungrudgingly and unsparingly is to enable us, in turn, to give to others. As did David and Angela. As did the Macedonian church that Paul applauds.

… in a great ordeal of affliction
their abundance of joy
and their deep poverty
overflowed in the wealth
of their liberality.
For I testify that
according to their ability,
and beyond their ability,
they gave of their own accord,
… but they first gave themselves
to the Lord and to us
by the will of God.
2 Corinthians 8:2–3, 5

Rich brothers and sisters in Christ, giving ourselves first to the Lord, dedicating our all for Him, let us also give liberally. And may we adopt it as a lifestyle, for Christmas, New Year, and beyond.