LIFE…A GIFT FROM GOD

To the person who pleases Him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner He gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind – Ecclesiastes 2: 26, NIV

“…Have you ever seen people determined to have fun even if it kills them? They try their best to extract from the moment all the JOY they can, but they get very little for their effort. This Solomon says, was a grief to him…

Finally, he sinks into despair….because he is helpless to change this law of diminishing returns. This is doubtless an explanation for many of the sudden, unexpected suicides of popular idols, of men and women who apparently had seized the keys of life with riches and fame, and whom the media constantly adored as objects worthy of imitation. But every now and then, finding nothing but frustration and despair as life is used up too quickly and there is no joy left in it, one of these beautiful people takes a gun and blows his brains out…

…ENJOYMENT is a GIFT of God. There is nothing in possessions, in material goods, in money, there is nothing in man himself that can enable him to keep enjoying the things he does. But it is possible to have enjoyment in life if you take it from the hand of God. It is given to those who please God…God wants us to have joy…God “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Tim.6:17)…

Isn’t it strange that the more you run after life, panting after every pleasure, the less you find, but the more you take life as a gift from God’s hand, responding in thankful gratitude for the delight of the moment, the more life seems to come to you? Even the trials, the heartaches, and handicaps that others seek to avoid are touched with the blessing of heaven and minister to the heart of the one who has learned to take them from the hand of God.

Fanny Crosby is one of the most popular hymn writers of all time. Blind almost from birth, she lived to be ninety years old. When she was only eight years old she wrote this poem:

Oh, what a happy child I am although I cannot see.
I am resolved that in this world contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy that other people don’t.
To weep and sigh because I’m blind, I cannot and I won’t.

That is the philosophy that pleases God…JOY is a GIFT of God, and it comes to those who take life daily, whatever it may bring, from the hand of a loving Father.”