As we live as the children of the Father of lights, the giver God, he will keep on pouring out his gifts, and they will overwhelm us more and more.
"Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." (James 1:16-18)
When the scriptures say "firstfruits" it means there are more gifts to follow. With every gift, God pushes our hands wider open to receive a still larger gift. The bother with us is that we often hold our hands open just enough for little gifts in fear that if the gifts get too big they may overwhelm us. The gifts may begin to take us over, and we may not be able to manage them.
This is a genuine danger, for that is the way of gifts. You know how uneasy you get if somebody gives you lots of gifts – and rather big ones too. This uneasiness is born of our habit of doing deals. Before God it is completely out of place. We can only have such an uneasiness before God if we are still thinking of doing a deal with him. That we nevertheless have such uneasiness is betrayed by our notions of not letting our religion go too far, not too much Word of God, not church every Sunday, or not devotions every day. Some parts of our lives we simply must keep under our own control. To the extent that we still negotiate terms with God, we are setting ourselves up for a fearful crash. The God that can be negotiated with does not exist. If that is the one with whom we think we do business, our end is darkness.
As we live as the children of the Father of lights, the giver God, he will keep on pouring out his gifts, and they will overwhelm us more and more. The Epistle of James is mostly about what God’s gifts do to us, how they work out in our lives. Nothing remote or beyond the bright blue sky about this. The gifts shape how you use your tongue, how you treat widows and orphans, the hungry, people with money, people you employ. James points out that if you think your religion is just a good deal you have done with God for yourself, you have had it.
But in James 1, we get the starting point: The giver God, from whom comes every good and every perfect gift, has made us his children with his word of truth. As God pours the gifts, with each fresh gift, he gives us another nudge, “Come on, join in my game. Help me give my gifts away.” God’s children play the game their Father’s way. To everybody else, to the deal-doers, it looks crazy, but, in fact, it is the best fun in all the world.
With hands held wide to him for his gifts, we will be moved and shaped by those gifts forward from firstfruits to the final joyful harvest. When we shall “sing unto the Lord a new song; for He hath done marvelous things."
