SCRIP-BITS

Lamentations 3:22-23.    It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
 
Oh Friends, it’s daybreak! That means new mercies, new blessings, new forgiveness and all the other good stuff that flows from our great and wonderful God is pouring out in large measure to fulfil His Word, our Bit: ‘It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.’ Yes my people, just as we buy things like bread, fruit and vegetables fresh every day, likewise the Lord our God begins anew with us each morning. At the start of every day, He provides us with new, nourishing stuff. The important thing then is for us to come to Him and accept the new provision on a daily basis. Just as He provided manna for the Israelites in the wilderness on a daily basis, He does the same thing for us in these supposed modern times. And like the Israelites of old, we too have to reach out for it, to go out and gather it. It doesn’t come to us automatically. Now that’s where too many of us fall down; we either don’t realize that the goodness of the Lord is there for harvesting, or we simply sit on our laurels and expect it to come to us with no expending of energy on our part. Unfortunately though my brethren, our God doesn’t work like that. Remember we’re partners with Him, and the word partners entails that each has their part to play. The Lord does His part by providing His goodness to us sinful souls, then we need to do ours by reaching out and accepting it and being thankful for His goodness. And that’s not all my people. Once we’ve gathered our daily bread, we need to remember that it wasn’t provided just for our benefit and selfish purposes, but also to share with the less fortunate around us. That’s another area where we believers are not as strong as we should be. We allow the troubles of the world, the scarcity of stuff to blind us to the Lord’s decree to share, and instead we tend to hoard for our own selfish purposes. We need to fully realize that we’re just stewards of the Lord’s goodness, of His generosity, (Luke 12:42) and whatever we’re blessed with, is not solely for us to treasure and/or enjoy, but also to share, to spread abroad, so that God’s glorious name can be uplifted, and His kingdom furthered. Oh Friends, it’s very important that we act upon the premise, the principle, that every blessing showered upon us, bears a portion that we need to share, to shower on someone else. It’s never all for our hoarding purpose. In any case, hoarding is not a very nice thing to do, when so many of our fellow men have nothing at all. But sadly, that’s the way of the world. It’s not that there isn’t enough in the world to go around, but it’s the inequitable distribution that’s causing most of the havoc. Too few have too much, while too many have too little. And if the distribution of the world’s assets was just a little bit fairer, many of our problems, like hunger, poverty, sickness and homelessness, would be truly alleviated, greatly lessened, if not eradicated. But unfortunately, like Aristotle supposedly said,’ Man is a selfish animal.’ And that’s the basic root of all our problems; selfishness, stemming from the lowly individual, right up through our societies to the international level. And my brethren, believe me, it’s only the LOVE of Jesus Christ working in our hearts and souls that can ever hope to lessen that selfishness. Look at all our world problems, and it’s either somebody wants what somebody else has, and they won’t share, or somebody wants to do it their way, and somebody else won’t allow them to do it. But it all comes right back down to the singular designation, ‘I, Me, My and Mine.’ Very seldom, if ever, does the plural, ‘We’ and ‘Ours’ aspect of the situation ever take precedence. Ah Friends, the ole fella’s chuckling because this is one of those Bits that seemingly came from nowhere. There was nothing that I personally felt the need to communicate today, so I asked for guidance, for something worthwhile to write on, and this is where the Spirit led me. Now the writing itself might be a bit convoluted and confusing, (smile) but the essence of the piece is very true. And the essence is that we need to begin each new day with our God; gather and accept His goodness and LOVING-kindness with humility and gratitude, then share what He’s so generously given us with others. I know that lifestyle is not so easy in practice, but we’re called believers and Christians because that’s Jesus’ way, and if we truly believe in Him, then we’ll bend over backwards to do it the way He desires. Much LOVE!…oh…to be like Jesus in every way…that’s the heartfelt desire of every Christian…