Daily devotion – Boxing Day
Heb 13:5 “Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Boxing Day – The name comes from a time when the rich used to box up gifts to give to the poor. Boxing Day was traditionally a day off for servants – a day when they received a special Christmas box from their masters. The servants would also go home on Boxing Day to give Christmas boxes to their families.
Christmas 2022 is over, but the Spirit of Christmas never leaves us. The great gift of God’s loves grows richer and deeper in our lives every day. The world’s idea of ‘love’ is sad and shallow. I never forget listening to the heartbreaking words from someone in the AFL who woke one morning to have his then wife tell him, “I don’t love you anymore!”
Whilst Christmas for this year is now officially done, the joy and wonder of Christ’s coming remains fresh and wonderful in each of our hearts, who like the Shepherds and the Wise Men, worshipped the baby born King, Jesus the Christ!
The Bible gives us the only true definition of what real love is and looks like, how it is seen in action, in Paul’s letter to the Church in Corinth.
1 Corinthians 13: 4 “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails.”
This is why marriage is so much more than just a wedding ceremony. It is the beginning of two peoples love, brought together by God, to live in such a way with God’s blessing that their love for one another grows more and more each day!
This is why Paul says marriage between a man and a woman created in the image of God, is a picture of our relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s a union to never be broken, to never grow old, but to each day grow even deeper and deeper in its relationship.
Next Sunday is January the 1st, the beginning of a New Year 2023. There are a lot of things the New Year will bring us that we aren’t aware of at this moment. But one thing we can be sure of is that Christ’s love for us will be as solid and wonderful then as it is now. But there is more!
That is that our understanding and love for God will increase more and more in the coming New Year.
As they did in the very first Boxing Day, let us who have been redeemed through His blood, experienced God’s wonderful forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of His grace ….share what we have of these riches with those who are lost and suffering under the weight of sin and the enemy’s oppression.