While she was still living, every year my Grandma would send unusually shaped and curiously wrapped packages. Some years they would be large and soft, wrapped in comic strips. Other years they were small and angular, wrapped in old wallpaper scraps. She was a resourceful one, always wrapping the unexpected in the unexpected. Sometimes the anticipation of opening the gift resembled a mild dread, depending on what had been bestowed on you the year before from Grandma’s mystery gifts.
Life can be like that too. Our future is unknown to us and often comes into our lives in the unexpected and unanticipated wrapping of our circumstances. Sometimes those circumstances may seem like a blessing to us and at other times they resemble a trial. But however we perceive our circumstances, Scripture is clear that God has a plan and a purpose for them and that the things God allows into our lives, He intends for our good and His glory.
James 1:16-18, “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.”
Why does God tell us to not be deceived? Is it possibly because the gifts he se ...
