Gifts are great. Gifts mean that someone loves us and that they want us to know about it. I've been on the receiving end of some pretty great gifts recently, including but not limited to: cards, kind words, FOOD :-), flowers, rest, grace, and suffering.
Yes, you read that correctly, I consider even the suffering to be a gift. While I certainly do not want to live my life crisis to crisis, this most recent turn of events has forced me to slow down (which I have not had the opportunity to do in several years). In the quiet of the "slow" things take shape and come into perspective. I was given the gift of time with 2 sweet friends this past week who have each had their own "this doesn't make sense" seasons in life. We spent time talking through those- not by way of commiserating, but rather to reminisce about how precious these opportunities of pain can be.
James 1:17 (CEB) says, "Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above. These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all." Everything we have is entrusted to us, even the bad stuff. I think about the parable of the talents where 3 separate individuals were given 3 differing amounts of money. The guy who got the smallest amount technically got the "bad gift" in this story. Yet, the expectation was the same for each of them- that they would take what they had been entrusted with and do something better with it. Our lives are not any different.
We have been entrusted with much: families, homes, careers, reputations, callings, possessions, circumstances. The expectation is that we will use each of them to bring honor to the one who bestowed them upon us. I am choosing to view my unexpected "gift" as a blessing. I want my life to point to Jesus, on the good days and especially the bad days. I want to be mindful that it is in these times that the world is watching all the more closely to see what we (as believers) do with what we've been handed. Satan would love nothing more than for God to get the blame rather than the glory for what we are experiencing.
Dear friends, I pray that today would be full of gifts for you- or maybe that you would have the opportunity to appreciate the gifts that have been there all along. If today's gift is unpleasant, take heart (as I do) from the words found in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (MSG), "So we're not giving up. How could we? Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever."
PS: Special thanks to The Message translation for calling it small potatoes... made me smile!
PPS: BTW and Before you forget I'm still human... Had I been given the choice between this "gift" and the gift of a tropical vacation, I would have a fantastic tan right now! I'm sure that I could have found a way to be thankful for that too. Just keepin' it real! 😜
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