The Perfect Gift

My daughter sent me a gift for my birthday.  When I first opened the box, my spontaneous reaction was "Ooooooooh!"  I could not believe she had found the perfect gift for me!  If someone had said to me, "Give me the specifications for the perfect gift, and I will make it for you," I'm not even sure I would have known exactly what to ask for.  But this was it -- the perfect color, the perfect weight, the perfect fit to flatter my somewhat out-of-shape and aging body!  The perfect "feel" to comfort my soul so that feels like a hug that I can wear on a 24-hour transatlantic flight.

To make it even more special, there are no real stores within a hundred miles or so of my daughter's town.  There are no Macy's, Dillards, or even Wal-Marts.  There is a very small "mall," which consists of a boutique grocery, and a few very small specialty stores.   The day she went to buy a gift for me, she discovered that the mall was closed because of the corona virus.  There was one store open, not for shopping, but for a photo-shoot for future advertising.  They graciously allowed my daughter to look around, and she spotted this item that, as she said, "had your name on it."  It was not what she intended to get me, but she knew when she saw it that I would love it.  It was as if God had led her to this one gift.

When it comes to the spiritual life, we hardly know what to ask for -- because we ourselves do not know the shape and size of our souls.  We don't know the color, the weight, the shape that will embrace and fill our hunger and thirst.  But Someone Else knows exactly what we need, what will fill our minds with the Peace and the Truth we seek, the love we crave, and the choice we don't know how to make.

Jesus said to the woman at the well, the woman who was so thirsty for love that she had had five husbands, none of whom had satisfied her thirst:  If you knew the Gift of God, you would ask, and [I] would give you ...a spring of water welling up to eternal life...... (John 4:10 & 13).   

Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.

I who speak to you am He.

Jesus is the Perfect Gift, and He Himself gives Another -- the Gift of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Advocate, the Counselor, the Helper.  He is what we would ask for, if we only knew what it was we were seeking.  There is only One Store that has this gift; there is only One Place where we can get it.  This Store is eternally open, and waiting for us to ask for the Perfect Gift, the One Who will satisfy all our desires.

Jeremiah 2:13 clearly tells us the problem:

My people have committed two sins: 

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own wells,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

But there is a remedy for our hunger and thirst: Jesus came to "water the land" of our souls, broken and forsaken.

Psalm 36 says,

Both high and low among the children of Adam 

seek shelter in the shadow of your wings. 

They feast on the abundance of your house; 

you give them to drink from your river of delights. 

 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

If you knew the Gift of God, you would ask, and he would give you....