This gift?
It's the life we are offered through Jesus.
Now before you tune me out, let me just tell you that I used to misunderstand this gift. I pictured it in a plain box wrapped with brown paper and scotch tape. I pictured the insides as ordinary contents that were sort of boring and usually sat on the shelf and collected dust. I imagined a plain hard-cover book with an undecorated cover and bland worn pages. Pages that didn't turn. Pages that are crisp because they were never read. A book that collected dust and contained a bunch of unattainable principles that were only for the extra pious and super boring.
WHY would I ever want to pass that on? This gift sat in the back corner on the top shelf of my bedroom book case collecting dust.
Several years ago, upon attending a church full of people who lived dangerously and pushed the limits of their comfort zone, I realized that this gift was NOT as I had imagined it. I realized that it looked much more like the one in the picture. It is bursting with color and life and it's DYING to be opened and discovered! It's hot pink and beautiful and promises peace, adventure and fun all in one. It's a life fulfilled and filled to overflowing. It's a life in community with others who are equally ecstatic to open the gift. This life is not free of challenge. It can be exhausting. It can take you to the end of who you are and then further. But it's the best kind of exhausted there ever is. There are ideas and plans inside this lime green and fuscia gift that seem to act of their own volition, that exceed your wildest dreams and expectations. And this gift... When you REALLY grasp the contents of this gift, they cannot stand but to be passed on... Given away... Not thrown haphazardously to a crowd of people, but carefully and delicately placed into the shakingly grateful hands of one who cannot wait to receive it. Much like a delicate ring placed on a woman's trembling finger by a man's sweaty nervous-with-anticipation hands, this gift is given with much love and intentionality.
I pray that today, you see this gift differently than ever before and that you would grasp how wide, how long, how high and how deep Christ's love for you really is. (Ephesians 3:18)
Love,
Renee