Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
James 1:17 (NIV)
Every Good Thing Comes Down
At the swim school on Saturday mornings the small ones go in the shallow end with a teacher who walks backward the whole lesson. A boy of six has learned the thing everybody has to learn there, that the water will hold him up the moment he quits fighting it. He floats eleven seconds on his back with his ears under, listening to the pipes.
The water does the same thing every time. It held his sister two summers ago and it will hold the ten o’clock class, and nothing that happens at that end of the pool changes what water is.
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James wrote it to people he was warning against being deceived about where their trouble came from. God tempts no one, he says. Whatever comes down from God comes down good, and it comes from the one who made the lights that do move.
He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. He chose. There’s a will behind the giving, and it belongs to one who wanted these particular people in existence. Water has no say in holding a boy up. The Father of the lights has one, and he uses it the same way every morning.
Every good and perfect gift comes down. The bread on the counter this morning, the pain being a little less today than yesterday, the friend who called for no reason at all, the hour of sleep that finally came around four.
People change, and James says God doesn’t work like that. He stays the same toward you today as he was in the worst week of last year, and he keeps sending things down through it.
At the shallow end the teacher counts to three and walks backward again, and the boy comes off the wall with his chin up. The water does what water has always done, and she is the one who decided to be in it at nine on a Saturday.
A Prayer to Remember
It’s early and I’m going back over everything that’s gone wrong, God, and two of those are real and the rest is fog. You haven’t shifted since yesterday, even though I have. Show me four things today that came down from you, and I’d like to name where they came from.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
