DECEMBER 20 - The Most Unusual Christmas Gift
The Lord will indeed give what is good. — PSALM 85:12
It was 1968, the Friday before Christmas. Still rather new to my wheelchair, I was feeling sad, frustrated, and tired of being paralyzed. But a few of my friends who dropped by that night knew the best tonic. Singing Christmas carols! On this particular evening, someone suggested we drive down to the old Pennsylvania Railway Station in Baltimore City because “the acoustics would be great!”
We weren’t disappointed. The station was nearly empty at that late hour, and our last glorious note of our “Joy to the World” reverberated off the domed ceiling. Suddenly a uniformed guard appeared. “Okay, okay, enough of this now. This isn’t a Christmas party or a church,” he said gruffly. “You young people need to clear out. Get going! And you — ” he pointed at me in my wheelchair, “you put that back where you found it! Get out of it, missy, right now!” This was too funny to be true. “Sir,” I said, “I wish I could get out of it, but I can’t. It’s mine.” The guard was getting angry. “Don’t sass me. Now you put it back!”
“Honestly,” I said, trying to keep a straight face, “I’m paralyzed. I really am!” All of a sudden he turned red. “Okay, okay, just get out of here. All of you!”
No, I didn’t get healed in that Christmas of 1968. But in the eyes of a guard in the railway station, I was just a normal, energetic, mischievous teenager hanging out with her friends. And that, right then, in that place and time, was a wonderful gift.
God gives many, many gifts in the course of our lives that go unnoticed, unthanked, and unappreciated. How different would your days be if you started viewing all of the good things of life — down to those small but significant things that bring us pleasure — as love gifts from our Father?
Lord, forgive me for an ungrateful heart, so often blind to your kindnesses. Thank you for your sovereign love revealed even in the little details of my life.
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