God's wish list

Christmas is coming up and you likely have your wish list. Ever wonder what God wishes for? Or is the whole suggestion of God wishing slightly dicey?

God has given us peeks into His heart and what comes close to resembling human hope. Read His pain between the lines in response to Baruch’s whining about his lot during the Babylonian conquest:

“‘… Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not …” (Jeremiah 45:4-5).

Read His anguish in the midst of Israel’s idolatries:

“How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8).

Read His torment over the promiscuous bride:

“On the day you were born … no eye pitied you. … When I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ … When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you. … I made my vow to you and entered into covenant with you. … But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore …” (Ezekiel 16).

The following is God’s wish, as shared with his intimate friend Moses on the day He gave His precious commandments, and the people all said they would obey them. God responded:

“Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!” (Deuteronomy 5:29)

Can you feel the yearning, the earnest hope? Enoch kept God’s commands well enough to get airlifted to heaven. Abraham kept them well enough to be called the friend of God. David kept them well enough to be called a man after God’s own heart. Let’s just keep them that well then—and all the more so because we have the Spirit of God in us. Your obedience prompted by faith is still on God’s wish list this Christmas.