Daily Manna · Day 163 · June 12
Perfect Gifts
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
Who do you thank for a good week?
James raises that question in a hard setting. His letter is written "to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad," Jewish believers living far from home in other people's cities. His first paragraph is about falling "into divers temptations," which means many kinds of trials. Later he writes about workers whose wages were "kept back by fraud," and about rich men who "draw you before the judgment seats." None of his readers is having an easy year, and that shapes what the verse means.
James never pretends their circumstances are good. Just before this verse, he insists that God tempts no one: "neither tempteth he any man." His whole argument is about where things come from. "Father of lights" means the Maker of the sun, moon and stars. People in the ancient world told time by those lights, and the thing about them is that they move. The sun swings across the sky, and the moon changes shape. Shadows creep across a yard all afternoon, and a room grows warmer and cooler as they move. The One who made those lights does none of that: "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." There is no angle from which He turns cold toward you.
So take one good thing from this week and trace it back past the person who handed it to you, all the way to the Father who sent it. Then thank that person anyway. Thanks that stops at the delivery driver never reaches the One who sent the gift. And the Giver behind it will be the same next week as He was this week.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 163 is In His Own Eyes (Judges 21:25).