Today, while I scooted around town to pick up a few little special gifts for my boys (and my man), I thought about the joy in gift-giving. It is my great delight (too great a delight, if you consult our blown budget) to buy special little things for those I love.

Every time I wonder about the heart of the Father when He seems to be withholding little wants or even what I perceive to be needs, the Spirit brings Matthew 7 to mind.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives,  and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Matthew 7: 7-11. 

Jesus draws a comparison between the holy and whole heart of God and our broken and battered hearts. If we, tainted and tiny though we are, delight to give good things to our children, to meet their needs and go well beyond to baskets and stockings, how much more does the pure heart of God delight to give His children good things?

Today, as we sit in the silence of Saturday, I realized that the Son was refused the gift-giving heart of God so we could become its recipients.

He asked for another way in the garden, but it was not given to Him. 

He sought the face of the Father, but found only absence. 

He knocked on the door to the Trinity, but found no welcome. 

The Father whose will He always sought gave Him a stone indeed. A heavy stone that sealed the borrowed cave in which His battered body was placed.  

The One who came to fish for men was given over to the whims of the serpent who began the whole saga. 

Sometimes it may feels like you are asking, seeking and knocking to no avail. If you have asked for provision only to receive what appear to be stones and serpents, remember this: the Father gave the perfect Son a stone so we could have a Savior.

When His hands seems confusing, we know His heart.

He Gave Him a Stone

The obedient Son, 
The favored One
       Begged for some other way.
But after bleeding  
And after pleading,
      Trembling trust won the day.

The heart that never turned
For His Father’s face yearned.
       God did not hear the groan.
The perfect, spotless Son,
For sin became undone.
       God gave  him a stone.

The Father let him lack.
Protection He held back.
       Now adopted are we.
Drinking wrath in our stead,
He who got a stone is our bread.
      A loving Father is He!