by Rhonda Rhea @RhondaRhea

I’m a die-hard gift card gal. I love to get them. I love to give them. Try not to dis the almost unreasonable joy I find in the card. If you hate giving and receiving gift cards and feel they’re impersonal, I hope you’ll still be my friend. And I will still accept your non-gift-card gifts.

But I also know some of you get me. You’re probably holding onto a spa gift card right now that you know is going to bring you joy. Maybe great skin too. But joy.

As with many things that bring us joy, gift cards are not without their challenges. There’s that gift card, for instance, that has 12 cents on it. You can’t throw it away or you’re showing disrespect and ingratitude to the person who gave it to you. Twelve cents, though. And it’s taking up at least three dollars’ worth of prime purse/wallet real estate. Twelve cents. And you probably don’t even shop at that store.

But we never dis the card. And we never discard dis card.

Understand that if you ever do decide to use that card, you’re going to spend 60 bucks at that store. To get rid of that 12-cent gift card, 60 bucks. It’s gift card economics and I think they now teach it in school.

If it’s a four-dollar card to the coffee shop, that means you’ll buy a five-dollar coffee. Which, naturally, goes great with that cinnamon cream cheese pastry. At an additional 4.75. But you’ll get your wallet space back so at least there’s that. High-calorie that.

Primer by far than wallet space? Heart space. What/who we make space for in the primest place of our heart determines the course of life. As we understand the supreme all-importance of our God, and as we make space for Him in every part of our lives, life is different. Life is better. Life is filled with all the best tasty-sweet joys. We’re able to face challenges and difficulties better through Him, and we see those challenges in a whole new way.

Give the Lord the prime space of your heart and He will empower you to understand what you couldn’t before. He will give you love for that unlovable person. He will give you strength to overcome. He will give you the best kind of practically unreasonable joy. And He will renew that joy day by day.

As we appreciate His presence and give Him prime prominence, we encounter the very one whose desire is to guide us into joy. In Psalm 16 David talks about always letting the Lord guide him and how he can’t be shaken (verse 8). Then in the next verse, he rejoices. Big. “Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices; my body also rests securely” (Psalm 16:9 CSB). It’s a secure, whole-body joy. Heart spa!

Just a couple of verses later, David prays, “You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures” (verse 11 CSB). Eternal, never-expires, constantly-reloading joy.

It’s nothing like the dollar-thirty-two gift card from Blockbuster still hanging out in that Ninja Turtle billfold. (That one we could legit discard though, right?) In His presence, a revelation of how to live, an abundance of joy—eternally. My card runneth over, friends. What a gift.

Rhonda Rhea is an award-winning humor columnist for great magazines such as HomeLife, Leading Hearts, The Pathway, and many more. She is the author of 19 books, including the popular romantic comedies co-authored with her daughter Kaley Rhea, Off-Script & Over-Caffeinated and Turtles in the Road. Rhonda and Kaley have also teamed up with Bridges TV host Monica Schmelter for the Messy to Meaningful books and TV projects. Along with Beth Duewel, Rhonda writes the Fix Her Upper series, and she also co-authored Unruffled: Thriving in Chaos with Edie Melson. She speaks at conferences and events from coast to coast, serves on many boards and committees, and stays busy as a publishing consultant. Rhonda says you can find her living near St. Louis drinking too much coffee and snort-laughing with her pastor/husband, five grown children, and a growing collection of the most exceptional grandbabies.