The Good Recession

For the past two weeks, our senior pastor, Josh Harris, (www.joshharris.com) has led our church in a mini sermon series called “The Good Recession.”  It has been insightful and encouraging, to say the least.  Josh’s essential question has been, “How should Christians who believe in a sovereign God think about these times—how can God use a bad economy for our spiritual good?”

As I have been thinking about this question, it has produced so much gratefulness in my heart.  Not just for Josh’s leadership in helping the church body to process the facts of our economy with faith, but also because of the opportunity I have to make the most of it.  God doesn’t just allow these hard times to happen so that we become more miserable and hopeless; He gently works through the difficulties to show us the instability of trusting in this physical world, in order that a greater trust in the stability of His heavenly kingdom and fatherly care will be cultivated.

“The Good Recession” has also caused me to reflect on what past generations went through in “The Great Depression.”  My Grandma, Marian Dahl, lived through this time and testifies to the hardships of living simply…at times, without much at all.  One of the sweetest things she has told me is that her grandparents continued to pay for her to take piano lessons, even though it wasn’t considered a necessity.  If she didn’t take lessons, how would she have had the passion to have my Mom take lessons, and how then would Mom have had the vision to incorporate classical music into my own upbringing? 

Anyways, I am writing this post mainly because I want to honor my Grandma for her generosity.  Perhaps she was a child of the ‘waste not, want not’ era.  But Grandma has always made Christmas extravagantly generous.  She simply LOVES to bless others by giving gifts.  She has always gone above and beyond to make others happy.  This past Christmas, my sweet cousin Shelby really really really wanted this Nintendo DS hand-held toy.  I don’t know if she expected to get it or not, but Grandma bought it for her…and she was simply thrilled.  In fact, she started crying and literally hugged for an entire 90 seconds.  Tightly, with her head burrowed into Grandma’s shoulder.

 I want to be like Shelby.  So grateful, so full of thanks, that I don’t want to leave my heavenly Father’s embrace.  And I want to be like Grandma during the “Good Recession.”  So generous, so willing to give, that I extend my time, money, and energies towards others in such a way that truly blesses them.

We celebrated Grandma’s birthday on December 23 of this year.  I won’t say how old she turned, because she doesn’t like us to talk about that!  :)  But, as you can see, she is still very young at heart, wearing her pink crown on Christmas morning at the breakfast table.

Happy New Years, everyone!