Morning Has Broken

"What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ--can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father--that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning." Mere Christianity

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." Romans 8:18-25

Much of life does seem like a bad dream. Those who have had a difficult life, or those whose life has not turned out as they hoped, can relate to what C. S. Lewis says. There is a deep longing for everything to come right in the end, an intense desire to wake up and have the nightmare be over.

The good news of Christ is that this is really going to happen one day. Those of us who have had a nightmare of a life in this world will one day wake up and it will all be over. Morning will come. A new day will dawn--and not only for us as individuals, but for all of creation.

In that new day we will discover an amazing thing. Christ has been using all the suffering of this life to shape us into beautiful presents he wants to give to the Father. What a thought that is, the idea that I could be a present to anyone, let alone a present to God!

It has been said that: who you are is God's gift to you; what you make of yourself is your gift to God. But that isn't quite true on two counts:

Who we are is partly a result of God's creation and partly a result of the frustration of creation, partly a result of the Fall. And
Who we become is completely a result of God's grace in Christ. Christ is making us into a present fit for a king, fit for the King. We certainly have a choice in the matter. We can submit to the shaping process, or not. We can be actively involved in the preparation of ourselves as a present for the King of kings, or we can withhold that present. But God's grace in Christ is the key element in our molding process. His hands are the ones which shape us on the potter's wheel.

Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift in Christ--that he is making us into gifts fit for the King, and that one day the nightmare of this life will be over; we will wake up and it will be like Christmas morning. And the King will open his presents.
Hallelujah! Amen.

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Will Vaus

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