Gifts

 A gift cannot be truly given until it has been accepted.

One morning in the midst of revivals I entered my classroom to find a tiny ceramic bird on my desk. It was perched on top of a blue post it note on which was scrawled simply in black sharpie, “Love you.” 

 

I had two choices. I could accept the gift, or I could consider it a nice gesture but doubt the underlying sentiment.

 

Perhaps the choice looks obvious to you, but it hasn’t always been so obvious to me. I am, perhaps, a skeptic, always doubting that people actually care about me, always supposing their kind actions are a form of pity or condescension. Any gift, grandiose purchases made by my schoolboard or tiny treasures such as a smile or a compliment, was met with doubt inside my heart.

 

When I was eighteen, one of my friends really let me have it. “You need to learn to just accept it and say thank-you when someone gives you a compliment,” she said. And so I tried to learn to say thank-you, but the acceptance part has taken some time. I’m not sure I’m there yet.

 

I love to give gifts, but my search for the perfect gift that is functional, beautiful, and has a sentimental backstory, usually ends in frustration and I end up gifting a highly unsatisfactory gift card or cash. Accepting gifts, however, has always been hard for me. The public spectacle of opening a package during a birthday party at school is enough to make me consider retirement. But I have begun to wonder if it is the gift itself that makes me uneasy, or the emotion one could perceive behind it.

 

If a gift is given out of duty, I’m not interested. If it is given out of actual love? Well, that makes me fearful. There’s so much at stake here. What if I mess up our friendship somehow and they regret giving it to me? If I accept the gift, that means I have to accept the giver loves me, and I know I’m not that lovable.

 

The reality of this doubtful part of me plays out in my relationship with Christ as well. I doubt that the experiences He gives me are true. I question His forgiveness, expecting it to be only a loan rather than an abundant life-long supply. I can ask Him for little things, yet I fear to request a large gift, because why would He love me that much?

 

But His gifts are real, and many times I need not even ask. The song going through my head when I wake up, the verse He gives during my devotions, the way the sunlight and shadows play together through the branches of a tree—all these are free and full gifts, His divine pleasure to give. Once again, the question is whether I will accept them, and so doing accept His love, or will I turn away, convinced I am not worthy to be loved?

 

Somehow, I think gifts are mine to earn. I have to prove I am worthy to receive.  I could understand God forgetting a sin. I can understand how He might choose to not see it, like some weary parents and teachers do with a troublesome child. But the fact that He sees my every sin, my each wrongdoing, looks it full in the face and says, “I love you,” with no hesitation, no condescension, no sigh of longsuffering, is beyond my capability to grasp.

 

I can receive a gift and refuse to use it. Many of us have been given gifts that perish in dark corners because they just aren't really "me". And there's things like the beautiful vintage style notebook a student’s mother gave me. She said, “It’s to use, not just sit around.” She must have known me. It’s still sitting around because I haven’t come up with the perfect words to write in it, even though I've tried.

 

To truly receive, we must believe, accept, and use. The Great Gift Giver has many gifts waiting for each of His dear children, but He cannot fully bless us with them until we are willing to let Him love us completely. He cannot pour our cups to overflowing until we are ready to accept. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

 

Will we take the gift of His Son’s blood? Will we use it? Or will we refuse it? 

A gift cannot be truly given until it has been accepted.

"Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." (2 Corinthians 9:15)