8. You are a gift!



www.colourbox.com

 

Last Christmas, one of the teens in our church’s youth group was trying to think of creative gift ideas for his family members. The main reason for his creativity: he didn’t have a lot of money. So he decided he was going to wrap up a large box and climb inside, and present HIMSELF as a gift to his sister.

There’s something in that kind of a gift that is both delightful and disappointing. I mean, let’s be honest.... It’s like the time I gave my brother a pair of his own pants for Christmas. (That’s right). I’m sure this young man’s sister was expecting to receive something new, something she didn’t have before. But her own brother? Awww…. I already know you! I’ve known you for 16 years.

It is fun to receive new things. In fact, I quite enjoy this cultural tradition of gift-giving on Christmas and birthdays!

But how do I receive the people who walk into my life each day? With this same attention? With the same joy? Actually, most often, I am distracted, indifferent, or worse, keeping a distance behind walls of fear, pride or judgment.

I already know you. I’ve known you for months….years.

Maybe for my birthday this year, someone needs to jump out of a box (or a cake!) for me and remind me that the real gift is not new “stuff” but the person right in front of me.

A gift far more precious than money or merchandise is the gift of human life…..of YOU! Although God has no need of man, He chooses to bestow life upon him as a free gift. Man, in his all his complexities and his distinctive beauty, is a gift from God. We experience this so profoundly at the birth of a child – or even the elation of falling in love – as we marvel at how amazing this other person is. It is good to be reminded and to wonder at the glory of man – and not just of some vague, global “man”, but of the  actual people I meet each and every day: my mom and dad, my siblings, my neighbors, my coworkers (even the ones that get on my nerves), my pastor, my friends….. Each one of them is a gift, created and given by God to the world (and to me!) to serve Him, fulfill His purpose for their life, witness to His love and give Him glory. And each one of them is unique and unrepeatable. That could be the subject of a year’s reflection!

But that’s not all……
St. Augustine says, “Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

If everyone around me is a marvelous gift of God, am I not also a gift? Yes!

In fact, as Pope Paul VI puts it, “Man is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, [and he] cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Guadium et spes, 24). Not only am I gift from God, but as a creature with free will, I can and must choose to make of myself a gift to others! I can be a gift to others when I serve them freely, when I choose to put aside my own wants for the good of another, when I am fully present to others and focus sincerely and attentively on who they are and what they need and desire. Among other examples, I can give myself as a gift to my (future) spouse by remaining chaste in mind and body, before and within marriage. Most importantly, I can choose to give the gift of my life back to the One who gave it to me, by committing to live a holy and virtuous life.

I can choose to give myself freely and totally to the One who gives Himself freely and totally to me. This is the even greater mystery - that the Almighty God would give Himself as a gift to His creatures. Not only in the Incarnation, not only throughout His entire life, not only on the Cross (as if this weren't enough!), but every day, in every Mass, Jesus Christ gives Himself - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - to me, in the Holy Eucharist. In a certain sense, as the priest opens the tabernacle at each Mass, Jesus leaps out of a box and proclaims, "I am the greatest GIFT you could ever ask for, and I am totally yours!"

Question: What are We Waiting For?

Once I was babysitting several children and told them they just needed to wait a little bit longer before we could go outside and play. Of course, this response was agonizing to them, as their little hearts were set on it. One girl, a 6-year-old, kept asking me every few minutes if it was time yet. Ugh, not yet. Joking around, I said, “Let’s make up a ‘waiting’ song!” Without missing a beat, she sang, “I hate, hate, hate to wait!!!”

Wow, a girl after my own heart.

Last week, I wrote about different forms of poverty. Here is an area in which I acknowledge my own: I LACK patience. Sure, I can usually stand in a line for a fair amount of time, I can endure it when someone postpones an appointment or phone call that was important to me, and I am typically relatively quiet about my frustrations and discontents when things are not going my way. But most of that can be attributed to personality characteristics and not virtue. When it comes down to it, I am squirming all over on the inside and wishing – sometimes subtly trying – to deliver myself from the discomfort of having to wait.

I hate, hate, hate to wait.

I sympathize with that little girl. It is so hard to have your heart set on something, even to hear it promised to you and to know it is coming, but to hear those words: “Not yet.”

Often, the Lord reveals something of His plan for me – for healing or marriage or mission work, etc. - and I get excited and say, “I’ll take it from here!” and I start planning the next three steps….. Just the other day, I was exciting to talk to a friend about foreign mission opportunities and so I asked him to call me so we could chat.  As I was leaving, he said, “Keep praying!” My heart sank just a little bit. I could just hear God saying, “Lindsay, relax. You don’t have the whole picture yet. Wait.”

But, Lord, you know I don’t like that word….

It is hardest for me to wait when I don’t understand. When it seems to me there is an easy solution to a problem and it is not being resolved as I wish it would be. When I or someone I love is in pain or in a bad situation and I am powerless to help. When I long to go somewhere or do something, and the door is just not open. Waiting takes humility and trust, because it requires me to admit that I am not in control and to believe that God has my best interests at heart.

When Jesus was 12 years old, He wandered away from His parents on their way home from Jerusalem. Scripture says that “after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). I can only imagine this scene of Jesus as a boy. Though He was God, He was also man, so He probably came to discover His own vocational call just as many of us do. Perhaps one of the Rabbis put his arm around Jesus’ shoulder and gave Him a very fatherly tour of the Temple, taking great care to explain everything present there, and helping to stir in the Heart of the Incarnate Word Himself a desire to one day stand before everyone and read from the scrolls…. And was not his heart burning within Him? J

Then Mary and Joseph finally find the boy and insist that He come home right this instant! Jesus knows in a much deeper way now that His Father is here (Lk. 2:49), His mission is broader than a life of carpentry work in Nazareth. Yet, what does He do? He returns with His parents to Nazareth, and for 18 more years carries on His life there. 18 years! What a long time to wait! 18 years of waiting for 3 years of public ministry. Jesus heard the call. No doubt He knew His identity. He could have begun His ministry at age 21. Or 25. How much more good He could have done!

Or.... how much good He could have failed to do.

For those 18 years, He was growing in intimacy with God the Father. He was growing in His identity and in His gifts and in His call. And for those 18 years, the Father was preparing the hearts of all those Jesus would minister to, so they would be able to receive His words. Had Jesus stepped out earlier, on His own initiative, the grace would not have been there, the fruits would not have been ripe, and so many conversions and healings would not have happened.

It is the Father Who ordains the perfect time for the carrying out of His will, and He knows what is best. I need the humility and trust to allow Him to work. And God knows that I have nothing good unless He gives it to me, so I ask for what I lack: God, grant me patience, and please hurry!


“Simply by making us wait, God increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.” - St. Augustine -

7. You are a Beggar

The Rise of Pro-Life Africa

“In a world that is currently being redefined and redesigned in the hands of wealthy and powerful social engineers, Africa is being increasingly pressured and prodded to embrace the new and emergent decadent culture of death. Issues such as abortion and contraception are being pushed as women's empowerment and reproductive healthcare by many western donors who seem obsessively committed to eliminating poverty through the elimination of poor people.”

First of all, Western society: PLEASE keep your CRAP out of the developing nations. They have enough problems of their own without your propaganda and your lousy excuses for “healthcare.” Thank you.

Secondly, I think this article – specifically this quote – really provokes this question: What is poverty?

Here we see Nigerians portrayed as a people renewed in their long-established commitment to honoring “the blessing of married life, the beauty of womanhood and the inestimably precious value of human life from the moment of conception.”  Beautiful! And according to the UN, 68% of the population of Nigeria lives on $1.25 or less a day, and at least 50% live in “multi-dimensional poverty” (significant deprivations in education, physical/emotional health and income). Not beautiful…

In contrast, we see the United States, a country not without economic problems, but certainly not known for widespread abject poverty (much more for reckless spending and ostentation). And yet the United States is a country so enamored with equality and freedom of choice that it writes immorality (even murder ) into its law books, celebrates things that ought to be lamented, and influences other countries to follow suit.

So who is poor?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a nun who worked for many years in the slums of India, had this to say:

"When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society - that spiritual poverty is much harder to overcome. And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome.” (From her address to the UN, 1994)

"There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God."

I write this not to minimalize material poverty, nor to make those from Western society feel horrible or godless. The material poverty that exists in many "developing" nations (as well as in many places in "developed" countries) is very real, but it is no more real than this "hunger for love" and "poverty of spirituality" which, in fact, exists throughout the world. In many places, this poverty, both physical and spiritual, is squalid and extreme, and it is right and just that we work to eliminate this kind of poverty, wherever and whenever it is found. We should seek to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to give hope to the hopeless, to instruct the ignorant, to “put love where there is no love” (St. John of the Cross). But we can do so with humility and true charity (rather than an attitude of superiority) when we recall the human poverty that we all have in common.

For, indeed, in every country and every culture throughout the world, man has the same fundamental need for love, companionship, and yes, God. Everywhere in the world, man stands before God as a beggar, naked and hungry, with empty hands, hoping to receive from Him what he needs. The more “stuff” that we have, the easier it is to forget this basic truth and depend on things or people other than God, imagining that these things belong to us and so they will always be there or we can always “get” more. But all of this “stuff” is in the hands of God. It is He who gives, and He can take away. We need to be reminded more often that everything is a gift, and we have nothing but what God gives or allows us to have, not even our very life and breath.

In the final analysis, there is no African or American, no upper class or lower class, no liberal or conservative, no pro-choice or pro-life. These are labels and categories created by man.

Before God, we are all only human, and to be human is to be poor.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit [those who are humble and recognize their poverty before God, and who are not attached to the things of this earth], for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).