Gifts

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights. James 1:17

JESUS is by far the perfect gift.
May you be filled with His peace this Christmas season.

In this season of gift-giving in honor of God's gift to us, I am reminded of two (out of many) gifts that He gave to Steven and me. One of those gifts is the ability to communicate that he blessed Steven with for so many years. Life is SO MUCH better with communication. Quote from brochure: We were told that he would never talk again because of extensive injury to the left temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes of the brain. However, God had different plans. I was at home the day the doctor first "capped" his trachea. I got a call from his nurse saying, "Somebody wants to talk to you." Then a voice came on the line saying, in just barely understandable words, "Hi Honey. I love you. Toward the end of Steven's life, he lost that communication ability again. But for the majority if the 18 years of his injury, it was there. Thank You, Lord!

Another gift of love from the Lord blew us away with the awesome interweaving of His plans.... Quite a number of years before the collision, while on vacation in Sarasota, FL, we attended a little church that was meeting in a school. Many years later, after Steven was injured and after moving to FL, we decided to try out that same church (probably one if several hundred churches in Sarasota), which had now become a church of thousands of members with its own building.

There were many adult Sunday School classes listed in the foyer to choose from, but God pointed us in the direction of a particular class taught by Truman Good. We walked into the class and introduced ourselves as Steven and Vicki Sauder. The class members stared at us kind of open-mouthed for a bit, and we wondered for a few moments if we'd gotten our clothes on backwards (or something like that). However, the class quickly proceeded to ask us if we were from IL and had been in a car collision a few years before and had a daughter going to Moody Bible Institute. Eventually we all realized that, "yes," we were the couple from thousands of miles away that the class had never personally met but had been praying for the last three years!

Apparently, Truman's son, Treavor, attended Moody Bible Institute in IL with our daughter Amy. Treavor had asked his dad to please have the class pray for a friend's parents who had been in a horrible accident and were badly injured.

Truman's class faithfully prayed, having received periodic updates from Trevor but not realizing that we were moving to Sarasota. What a joy it was for them to see the answer to their prayers unexpectedly walk through that Sunday school door and for God to allow us to see a tiny glimpse of the team of prayer warriors He had faithfully and lovingly assembled for us around the world.

Needless to say, all of us experience the undeserved grace of many gifts of love from our all-powerful God, who calmly moves mountains to care for His children's needs. The gifts are as many-sided and diverse as we can imagine - relational, financial, physical, emotional, and on and on. For some of the moving, He may activate prayers of saints whom we are totally unaware of. And of course, the greatest mountain of all - and the greatest gift of love ever given - was the mountain of sin that He removed for each of us, hanging alone on an old rugged cross. Thank you, precious Lord. Thank you.