The Gifting Giver

Here I am again, the beneficiary of the Gifting Giver. Just when another veneer is pulled back to show me again a little more of how I don’t deserve any of the goodness in my life, a new cry is heard, and a beautiful little girl floods into my life.

She sleeps. She looks around. She flails her arms awkwardly. She even smiles a bit. And we dream of the years ahead that we pray the Gifting Giver will allow. How can I respond to this joy? I cannot be one of the nine lepers who never returned to give thanks. A lifetime down on my face in gratitude would not be sufficient. Yet the gift is good, and it is to be enjoyed, to be lived.

Are these ideas in tension with each other? To enjoy the gift, do we need to stand and turn away, in some sense, from the Giver? If this is the right path, then this tension is likely a fabrication. There must be a posture of the heart that enjoys the gifts, to God. And this enjoyment is then the most perfect expression of gratitude to the Gifting Giver. How do I discover it? I don’t know, but there’s a whisper that hovers around the whole idea, suggesting that it is found indirectly. You see it best when you don’t look straight at it. Maybe the life that strives to glorify God will wake up some morning, having come upon this elusive synthesis, but never stopping to wonder when or from whence it came.