Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to
you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
(John 4.10
NRSV)
Christmas Day arrived and the children were up at 6:00 a.m. At first they were overwhelmed by all the presents. "My sisters had knelt down, each by her pile of gifts; they were squealing with delight, till they looked up an saw me standing there in my nightgown with nothing. Nothing." The young boy didn't get the pony he wanted more than anything else for Christmas. His sisters joined him in his agony, running back to their bedrooms crying. He refused to eat anything. He was too upset. He went out to the stable, and his mother came out to comfort him. He noticed his father watching him from a window for a couple of hours. This was his worst Christmas ever--not one present.
Then he noticed a man riding a pony down the street, a pony with a brand new saddle, and it was a boy's saddle. The man was reading the numbers of the houses. "He looked at our door and passed by," Lincoln remembered. That was the last straw. He flung himself on the ground and began crying uncontrollably. "Say, kid," the stranger asked, "do you know a boy named Lennie Steffens?" "Yes," he spluttered through tears, "that's me." "Well," he said, "then this is your horse. I've been looking all over for you." The man told Lennie his excuses for being so late, but the boy never heard them. "I could scarcely wait." Before too long he was riding down the street on his pony. To this day he still doesn't know if that was his best Christmas or his worst.
You see, the pony was always coming. It was Lennie's impatience and uncertainty that drove him to the brink of despair.
I've been there, haven't you? God doesn't work according to our time schedule, but according to His. And sometimes He doesn't appear to be working at all. But He is. He is.
Dear God, thank you for my blessings. Forgive my childhood selfishness. You have given me all I really need in Jesus Christ. Amen.
