We have an odd relationship with gifts. Some of them, the ones that are just the ones we want or didn’t know we wanted – can be treasured for a lifetime. Others, like a ceramic lamp given to you by a beloved relative but not quite to your taste, can be a burden – especially if you feel obliged to put it out when she visits. Giving gifts can be an equally mixed experience. It’s a joy when we know just what to give or stumble across the perfect item, and it’s a painful obligation to select a gift when we are uninspired.
church at Ephesus (Eph 4:1-8). We may feel they are burdens, as did Elijah who ran and hid when the consequences of his prophetic gift became dangerous (1 Kings 19:1-8). Or like the apostle Andrew, who never imagined five loaves and two fishes would feed thousands, we may not even recognize how mighty they are (John 6:8-9). In the end, no matter how we feel about them, gifts are meant to be used: to do any less is to fail be to be true to ourselves and to God.
While we shouldn’t underestimate our gifts, we shouldn’t overestimate them either. They don’t exist in a vacuum, and are most effective when combined with the gifts of others. The gifts of a community support and amplify each other. Some provide vision, some provide funds, and some provide skill. As Paul told the Ephesians, “we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love” (Eph 4:15b-16).
Let us embrace both our gifts and their limits. Let us neither neglect nor boast of them. Let us embrace the gifts of the community so each may multiply the fruits of the others. Each child of God is a gifted child. Living into those gifts and encouraging others to do so makes us participants in the realm of God that yearns to break though into the world.
Evening readings: Psalms 9; 29
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