Appreciating Providence

Today is Christmas eve. As I prayed this morning, I was thinking  about a TV set. It has become what it is to support the great industry that creates the content. Without the content, there would be no TV such as we have it. Entertainment, news, sport, learning, whatever the content, it's there, and so the means of presenting it to you on small to large screens was invented, developed, refined, marketed – all the steps involved in the process – and you get to watch the content. 

But you cannot enjoy the content without access to those devices that bring you the content, ensuring power and signal to those devices, and, in most cases, a paid subscription. The content is there whether you watch or not, but so many things are entirely within your control and choices that you make determine what content you view. 

When viewing, almost everything is living someone else's dreams and not particularly bringing you any closer to any of your own worthwhile dreams. All too often, time that we choose to spend watching what other people have dreamed actually prevents us from achieving some of the dreams that we really do want to achieve for ourselves!

I love the beauty of the sun today, the rain that fell yesterday that is so much needed in this severe drought, the fresh air, the mountains, great rivers and small streams, vegetation, all manner of life. All things that beautify this Earth whereon we dwell, that please the eye and gladden the heart. I praise my Messiah for His great providence and I desire to do all that I can to benefit from the 'content' that He wants me to enjoy. That is why He created it all. I love Him for it. 

This Christmas, and in the next year, let us enjoy the providence of a loving creator who has made so much 'content' available, by having the devices, power, signal, subscriptions, or whatever is required and within our control, to enjoy what He makes freely and abundantly available to us. 

I hope and pray that each end every one of us will give our love and devotion to Him – Jesus Christ – and His and our Heavenly Father, this Christmas and throughout the next year, to enjoy and benefit from His providence. I know that He is the great Creator. I love His creations. 

I have talked to Heavenly Father in prayer, and He has talked to me through the scriptures. This is not just some urban legend that I am sharing that someone somewhere sometime may have experienced, but this is my firsthand witness that I share from Cape Town on this, the day before Christmas 2016.