gifts on Great Exchange

In rural Msinga, a municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the highlight of Christmas Day festivities is when men, newly returned home from work in the big cities, gather to sing a...

The Strain of Time Time marches forward for all of us, doesn’t it? There are 365 days in the Gregorian calendar. There are 365 days in the Liturgical calendar. While the respective beginnings and en...

Trade with the gifts God has given you.

He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.

It’s not only more blessed to give than to receive, it’s also a whole lot easier.

The season of Epiphany is an invitation to follow Jesus into the ways of gratitude and joy,. We are no longer bound by the dissatisfaction of our consumer culture that tells us to keep striving for mo...

The other way to destroy the relational bonds of gift giving is to turn a gift into a commodity. Let’s say it’s my birthday. Ten friends come over to my house, and we eat a good meal, and they all bri...

My wife and I did a portion of our honeymoon in Central Oregon, and as an English major in college, I desperately wanted to attend a performance at Ashland’s renowned Shakespeare Festival. As newlywed...

"To be alone with Jesus in adoration and intimate union with Him is the Greatest Gift of Love - the tender love of Our Father in Heaven.

Holy One, Giver of every good and perfect gift It is your great grace that offers us salvation It is grace upon grace that gives us the chance to join you in your saving work You trust us that much Yo...

The words “gratitude” and “grace” come from the same root word, gratia in Latin and kharis in Greek, as mentioned earlier. In addition to being the name of a goddess, “grace” is a theological word, on...

Revelation is a hard gift to receive. You must give up everything else to receive it—like finding a treasure in a field and selling everything you have so you can get that treasure.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

Leader: Oh God, You have been so gracious to us. You have given us so many wonderful gifts—they outnumber the stars in the sky! You have kept Your promises to us, and You have been faithful!  Peop...

God has given us all a message of reconciliation-that God, in Christ, has reconciled the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). The first place we are invited to practice this reconciliation is wit...

Grace is a gift that costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient.

Holy One of Israel, of all Your love is unfailing, steadfast, sure You call Your mouth opens wide Your hand opens wide Your storehouse opens wide Your heart opens wide You call Come, Listen, Receive...

O Giver of every good and perfect gift, we confess that we are poor stewards of your bounty. You give us time, but we waste it. You give us life, but we use it to glorify ourselves. You give us wealth...

One day, the famous surrealist painter Salvador Dalí walked into a New York bookstore and asked for a copy of his own autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí . The young clerk immediately...

Experiencing God’s Goodness through Giving I’ve seen God provide for my family and me in some remarkable ways throughout the past year. I know that many of us lost a lot during Covid, and I don’t mak...

Gracious God, in Christ Jesus, you teach us to love our neighbors but instead we build dividing walls of hostility. You show us how to love one another as sisters and brothers but instead we hide from...

If silver and gold are things evil in themselves, then those who keep away from them deserve to be praised. But if they are good creatures of God, which we can use both for the needs of our neighbor a...

Context — Community First It’s important to remember that, like many cultures in the world today, Paul’s context is community-oriented. This is often hard for Americans to truly grasp. We are focuse...

Preaching Commentary Word Study Ἐπιφάνεια: The Greek word from which the English transliterates Epiphany is a combination of a preposition and a verbal idea. Epi -upon and fainō -to shine, illumi...

Almighty God, whose loving hand has given us all that we possess: Grant us grace that we may honor you with our wealth and belongings, and, remembering the account which we must one day give, may be f...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Irony When we discover a bit of irony in life, we feel like we’ve struck gold. When we stumble upon a bit of irony in Scripture, it’s holy gold! Maybe you read...

The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never ...

Sabbath is the most precious present humankind has received from the treasure house of God.

Context — Community First It’s important to remember that, like many cultures in the world today, Paul’s context is community-oriented. This is often hard for Americans to truly grasp. We are focuse...

Gracious God, you are the giver of every good and perfect gift. You give us our talents, our freedom, and our financial resources. We struggle to give back to you from these gifts. We often worry that...