Amazing Grace

Jesus said ask and you will receive. What we find out is that sometimes we ask and receive much more than we asked for. I asked for people to share their pictures of church events with me, and for someone to loan me a camera for our trip to Missouri for Jonathon's graduation. At the dinner for Breast Cancer Awareness last night, I had not one but two families present me with the gift of a camera. As a matter of fact, I was explaining how generous, and unnecessary this was to the first benefactor, when the second asked me to come to a corner of the room so he could share his gift. (Both cameras were given by married couples, my use of gender simply refers to the person I was talking to at the time.)

I can't explain how I felt! I felt loved, appreciated, a bit overwhelmed. And part of me felt guilty. Did people take my mention that we did not have a digital camera as a hint that I wanted someone to give us one? Did people think I was fishing for gifts? And then there was the problem of what to do with TWO cameras. I mean, each couple bought us a camera because they thought we didn't have one. It wouldn't be fair to accept two without telling the benefactors. I told the second couple, thank you, but someone else just gave us one. They told me, "That's ok, this one is new." Then I realized that they thought we had been loaned one. I said, "No, you don't understand, the first one was new too!" They kindly told us, "Well then you and Terri will both have one."

About this time the husband from the first couple walks up. He hands me the receipt for his camera, in case I have any problems. I say, "It's good that you gave me the receipt, because I may need to take one back, this other couple also gave us one." I was offering to take it back and give him his money back, or split the money between the two. But he gave me the exact same response as the first couple. He said that now Terri and I would both have one.

As the night wore on I began to enjoy my gift. I opened one of the cameras and tried to take a few pictures. I doubt any came out very well, with me not having had any time to really figure this new fangled digital photography thing out. But I enjoyed trying. As the night came to a close, Terri and I talked about how generous this was, that not one but two families would do this for us. But then I thought, that's just how God is. Paul said of God in Ephesians 3:20 that he"is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine." I would have thought it very generous if someone trusted us for a week with their camera. It was more than I could imagine that someone might give us one! And that two families would give us one? Well that's just immeasurably more than I could have imagined.

That makes me wonder how we might sell God short when we pray. I think we come to him in prayer like a kid with a Christmas list. We ask for a lot more than we expect to get, but we know if we ask for a lot, maybe we'll get a few good things. Shouldn't we turn this idea upside down? Let's come to God and only ask for what we really need. Let's spend the rest of our time just loving him, praising him, giving him the worship, the glory, and the honor due him. And we can expect that he will give more than we asked, more than we imagined, immeasurably more than we imagined. He's a God of grace, He always gives us so much more than we deserve.

By the way, we are most like him when we give. Last night, between the ticket sales, the donations from love offerings, and the sale of cakes (like I needed a cake), we collected over $1,000 for Breast Cancer Research. This showed me that the two families who were so generous to my family were not the exception, but examples of the norm at our church. God has blessed me to be in a church where people share what he has given them. He has blessed me to be in a church where people have enough faith in Him to give, because they know that He is going to take care of their needs. Thank you for being a blessing to me, to my family, to past present and future breast cancer patients and their families. I love being your pastor!