Merry Ninth Day of Christmas— Responding to God’s Gifts Part 3

As discussed Saturday, scripture and experience tell us that we should respond to God’s gifts with thoughtful gratitude. That likely pleases God, just as we are pleased when our kids appreciate things we do for them.

OK, so how do we do that? A close reading of the scriptures considered Saturday (Exodus 15:1-21, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Luke 1: 5-25, 57-79 ) suggest four dynamics.

First, the folks receiving the blessings gave real thought to what God delivered them from. They didn’t just say “whew, I’m glad that’s over,” and put it out of their minds. Instead, they reexamined the tough spots they experienced in light of what God had done for them. Exodus 15:9, 1 Samuel 2:3.

Second, those folks considered what God’s intervention revealed about Him. That lead the Israelites to better appreciate God’s power. Exodus 15:2-3, 6-8, 11-13. It helped Hannah better understand His justness and concern for the weak. 1 Samuel 2:2-8. John the Baptist’s father came to more fully appreciate God’s faithfulness. Luke 1:72-73, 78.

Third, they thought about how the blessings God just delivered cleared the way for future blessings.  Exodus 15:14-18, Luke 1:74-78.

Fourth, their doing those things magnified God’s original blessings. Countless others have learned about God via scripture’s description of their actions.

We experienced something like that in the garden last year.  Our blessing was a mechanical seeder. We messed up the seeding of our spring crop, and God intervened by prompting us to get the seeder.  That wasn’t as dramatic as parting the Red Sea, but it increased production and allows us to do much more in much less time.

God lead us through the four dynamics discussed above. We more fully appreciated the problem God solved by seeing the contrast between our anemic spring crop and the lush crops that followed; we won’t repeat the mistake that revealed. The whole process lead us to more fully appreciate God’s faithfulness by providing (yet another) example of how He gets us what we need to get His work done. Our thinking about the seeder’s capabilities lead us to get better at what He’s called us to do; understanding its precision allowed us to intercrop radishes between rows of other, slower maturing, crops, significantly increasing production. All those things lead to greater blessings for others; there was more food for hungry folks and, who knows, maybe recounting these things will bless other folks in other ways.