| God's Gift To You © Betty Sue Eaton |
| Listening to the priest's Palm Sunday message, I was once again reminded of God's great gifts to us if we accept them. No matter what we have experienced in our lives, no matter how good or bad they have been, He sent His only Son to redeem us from the hurts we have gone through and give us joy unlimited when we accept Him as our personal Savior and live as He wants us to. We are born with a plan already in place for our lives and futures. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts God gave us even before we were born was the gift of free choice with what to do with our lives or not as we choose. Even though He wants us to lead Godly lives, we have the freedom to follow that holy desire or not. God gives us families, mates, children, the ability and intellect to pursue a livelihood and have comfortable lives if we so choose. However, sometimes, He takes those great blessings away and we are left grieving and heartbroken by those losses. They are part of His life plan for each of us. That does not mean He loves us any less or cares for us any less. Quite the contrary; He cares for us so much that He brought His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to live among us, teach us, suffer and die on the cross to pay for our salvation and entry into His kingdom when we, ourselves, die. That great act of compassion also guarantees that our loved ones, should they precede us in death, will also enter into that kingdom to wait for our own homecoming. As I listened to the priest describe the suffering of Christ on the cross, I was again moved by the struggle He was going through to tell the world about His Father in heaven and the joy of accepting Him as the Emissary of God, sent to tell us the Good News of Salvation. Even on the cross in the midst of unfathomable agony, Jesus was doing His Father's work in saving the thief hanging beside Him on another cross. "This day you will be beside me in Paradise"! What love! What compassion! What forgiveness! No other person who ever lived can even come close to the great love exhibited that day on Golgotha! I will not deny that losing one of our loved ones hurts us, breaks our hearts and leaves us grieving to the very fiber of our beings, but God is in charge of it, and will heal our broken hearts when we ask and follow His teaching. He is all, in all, and eternal. We are mortal; He is immortal. He is our creator, our keeper, our savior, our healer, our comforter, our teacher. He will always be there for us. All we have to do is go to Him for comfort when we suffer. As the priest said yesterday after quoting Jesus as He hung on the cross, "No matter what we have been through, when God wants us to receive His gifts, we cannot stop them! They were planned for us long before we were born and what He wants us to have, we will have in spite of all we do to refuse them". How wonderful to know that we have someone so great on our side! How wonderful to know that all we have to do is ask. |
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| A Christian Grief Ministry |
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