BAILEY

Every Christmas - and sometimes in June or July - people watch the movie 'It's a Wonderful Life' with Jimmy Stewart. It's one of the sappiest films - with an ultra-sappy ending - we've ever seen and yet we keep watching it.

The characters are all standing around in a cinematically perfect little group laughing with hysterical joy. Why? Because the main character, George Bailey, played by Stewart, has been allowed by heaven to see things as they really are.

I won't suggest that the movie has its angelology down pat, but the point sticks: God sees things in ways we cannot see and He is using us in ways we cannot expect, using even frustrations and trials in our lives.

If you could really see the spiritual reality of your life - that the battle is won by Christ already and that far less than you ever thought stands between you and the joyful, fulfilled life God wants for you, you would respond just like George Bailey.

That's pretty much the reason we are called to surrender on a daily basis. It isn't even the surrendering part that is so challenging, it's the 'daily' part. But we have to. Daily.

We have to because our memories are so poor about yesterday and the day before. We quickly forget how God brought us through ... we forget the sacrifice Christ made at Calvary ... we forget the promises ... we forget His lovingkindness and grace and mercy toward us. So we have to 'daily Bailey' it.

At the movie's end, George Bailey kisses his wife and kids and stands there like a goof with his mouth wide open in a silly grin - and yet he is, in that moment, expressing the passion of a life whose doors have burst off their hinges by seeing things the way they were all along, if only he'd had God's perspective on it.

That's our challenge ... daily.

Be a Bailey.

And be blessed.