Today I am repenting of my bad memory. I had allowed myself to forget something important.
I had not forgotten that God is kind, or that He is generous, or that He loves me. No, it was something else.
I had forgotten that sometimes God does nice things, just to do nice things.
I was beginning to allow a false god to creep into my life. A god who was kind and generous and loving, but false because he was also eminently and irredeemably sensible. The false god was my favourite uncle, who never forgot my birthday and was always generous with his gifts, but…but when I sat down to open the present it was clothes, or a science kit, or a subscription to an educational magazine. This god never gave anything frivolous or fun for fun’s sake. This was the false god I had been allowing to move into my life. The god who smiled patiently at me and said, “I’m glad you’re having fun, James, but shouldn’t we get on with something a bit more constructive now…”
I had forgotten, you see, a particular thing that happened to me once. A time when God gave me something specific in response to a prayer that He invited me to pray. Something kind and something generous, but ultimately something utterly pointless. My life was not meaningfully enriched by it. The possession of this thing did not make me more like Christ. There was no secret purpose or divine providence behind it, other than to show me that sometimes God is just nice.
And recently, when I was allowing myself to worship this false god, the god who always had my best intentions at heart, and therefore became concerned when it looked like I was enjoying myself a little too much, the real God showed up. He reminded me who He was, and that sometimes He did nice, but totally unnecessary, things.
I had forgotten, you see, that He is not just the God who looks out of the window in the morning and says, “Are you going outside today? You’d better take a jumper because it looks a bit chilly.” He is also the God of water fights, and jokes that go nowhere, and lazy afternoons spent lying on the sofa watching TV.
Sometimes God gives for the sake of seeing a smile on our faces, and the smile is the only point.
I had forgotten that, and I repent.
I had a similar awakening just today…God gave me an unnecessary, extravagant gift, and I had a picture in my mind of a child jumping around the giver saying,”thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!”.