The Gifts God Gives UsIf my life is a gift, where is the exchange desk?
~ By Brian Pengelly
I remember sitting there just staring into the box. It was without a doubt the ugliest, most impractical gift that I had even seen. I tried really hard to bluff, to hide the disappointment, but even my years of training in drama and public speaking weren't going to help me mask this one: the gift stunk!
We have all had gifts given to us that we have felt this way about. We get them, but we don't want them, and immediately begin plotting how we can tactfully re-gift or exchange them. But what do you do when you get an unwanted gift from God?
Well I have had a couple of those gifts: the gift of pain, the gift of singleness, and the gift of disappointment. "Wait a minute," I hear you saying. "Are those gifts? I don't remember seeing them in the last spiritual gift inventory I filled out." But the Bible is full of examples of each of these being a gift.
Suffering a can be a gift. That doesn't mean it is fun, but it means that God uses suffering to bring good in our lives. My least favourite verse in the Bible is Romans 5:4-5 "Not only so but let us rejoice in our suffering because suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, character, and character, hope." God gave me this verse years ago as a life verse to chew over, and I am still choking on it on a regular basis. When I first came across this verse I was just beginning to begin to deal with a great deal of pain in my life, not the least of which was realizing that I was same-gender attracted. At the time my greatest prayer was that God would just take this struggle away. I prayed and prayed. And yet it never did go away.
For many years I was very bitter towards God. "How could he ignore my pain? Didn't he love me?" And the thought of rejoicing in it made me want to throw my Bible across the room. "Was God some kind of cosmic sadist?" But in time I came to understand something: God was not asking me to rejoice that I was in pain - that would be twisted. He was saying that we rejoice even when we are in pain because God can bring good things even out of that. The challenges that I faced growing up same-gender attracted were not good things in and of themselves, but they were a gift in that God used them to bring good things in my life. I would never have chosen SGA if anyone had bothered to consult with me. But my experiences with it have been the catalyst for tremendous spiritual growth in my life. I have a hard time picturing who I would be without that experience. So I count it as a gift.
Singleness was another gift I never really wanted, but was given for a significant part of my life. I spent a great deal of time complaining to God about it in my twenties as I watched friend after friend get married. I remember going to my 10 year reunion and being the only one there not married or in a significant relationship. I was miserable and bitter. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how much better my life would be if only I was married. In fact it seemed to me if only I could deal with that issue, everything else in my life would magically be okay.
My perspective on this has changed somewhat since I got married two years ago. That is not to say that marriage is bad and I wish I were single again. I love being married. Marriage is a gift, and I treasure it dearly. But time has given me the wisdom to see that singleness was a gift too. There were things I was able to do both personally and in ministry that I can not do now as a married man. The freedom that I had to pick up my life and move across the continent if an opportunity so arose, to travel without worrying about leaving my spouse behind, to have the luxury of time to invest in so many people over the years because I was not investing that time in my marriage, were all gifts. Even as I enjoy new gifts of a different kind of intimacy and security in my marriage, I miss the gifts of singleness that I had.
And as I talk to many people around Canada it often seems the single ones are longing for when they will be married, and the married ones are longing for the freedom of the good old days when they were single. Which has led me to understand that while singleness and marriage are both gifts, and both good, we should focus our energies on being thankful for the gift we do have rather than longing for what we don't.
That brings me to disappointment. You see, being married did not magically make all disappointment in my life go away. One of the things that I have always wanted to be in life is a father. Yet even after getting married I have discovered that for various reasons that will probably not ever happen.
The temptation is there to be bitter. It is easy to complain to God that His gifts are not good. But I think I have learned something along the way: even when what my life becomes is not what I hoped, wanted or dreamed of, God still has good things for me.
Almost ten years ago I began to be mentored by a man who, like myself, found that he was unable to have children. But rather than let the disappointment of that consume him, he saw it as gift, and promised to God to spend the time and energy he would have put into children into any youth that God allowed him to minister to. Over the years he has tirelessly and sacrificially given of his time, love and money to mentor hundreds of young people struggling with SGA. He has been a father to both my wife and I, and could be because he chose to see his childless state as a gift, and invest in others instead of being bitter at what he did not have. His example has prepared my own heart for the ministry that God has in front of me. I do not have any children of my own, and may never have, but this is a gift, in that it allows me to be a father to many in a different way. It was not the gift that I wanted, but it is a gift that is good.
As I write this I am looking at the gift from my friend. I know I told you it was the ugliest gift I ever received but... it kind of grew on me over the years. A while ago I found it in a box, and decided to put it out. It gave the room... character. I still don't know exactly what my friend was thinking when she bought it for me, but when I look at it now I think about how she dragged its considerable weight a great distance to bring it to me. Now when I look at it I smile. While it is not the gift I would have chosen, it was given in love. And it helps remind me on the hard days... and there are plenty... to be thankful for the gifts I have.
4 comments:
I know him! (i am friends with him and his wife)
that is a good article.
Wow weird finding my stuff in random places! Glad this was encouraging to you! Please let me know when you are gonna post my stuff though! :D
Merissa, I am going to be in Calgary next week. Email me at brianp@newdirection.ca
I appreciate that you're trying to encourage people who are suffering in various situations, and that calling suffering (or the situations that cause it) a "gift" has been helpful to you and others. However, I think it's a modern teaching trend, and probably not a good one, in terms of a message to the masses. I say this for several reasons:
1) Suffering is never referred to a gift in the Bible. Just look up the word "gift" in your concordance and see what the scriptures do and do not call a gift. You'll find no surprises -- it's a word always used for what you'd expect to be "good things", like talents or abilities, special blessings. "Rejoicing in your sufferings" (Romans 5:4-5), is not hyping up your sufferings to the level of a gift, it is more a matter of rejoicing despite your sufferings, and as you've aptly pointed out, a matter of finding hope in the wonderment of how God might use it for good.
2) The trend of calling suffering itself "a gift" has caused many people to be disingenuous about their sufferings, rather than being real about them, like David in the Psalms. Not only is it "unhealthy" to "stuff" suffering, it also deprives the church community of the opportunity to minister to those whose sufferings are hidden.
3) Calling suffering, and those things that can create it (ie. sickness, infertility, unwanted prolonged singleness) a "gift" sets a standard of fortitude that is too high for the average person to bear, like the lawmakers Jesus said woe to in Luke 11:46. Even Joni Earecksson wouldn't say "the gift of paralysis", as much as she is an example of how to be grateful for the opportunities for ministry that suffering can present. It concerns me that when given message that "God can use our sufferings for good" goes beyond those biblical parameters into "not only that, but it's a gift", we may win some, but we lose others.
I have recently explored this trend with some other Christians in the area of singleness. We found that the term "gift of singleness" is actually an erroneous translation of 1 Cor 7:7 that begun with certain modern bibles in the 70's. When properly translated, neither singleness nor marriage are deemed as gifts. The New Living Tranlation has since corrected their version of 1 Cor 7:7, which you can find here: http://www.newlivingtranslation.com/05discoverthenlt/ssresults.asp?txtSearchString=1+corinthians+7&search.x=26&search.y=9
You make some good points and I do agree that the word "gift" could certainly give the wrong message were we to use this approach "carte blanche".
However, as I read this personal testimony, I can see that this word "gift" was helpful to Brian in giving him a way for him to accept his unpleasant and painful circumstances and work through them.
Certainly this way of looking at it may not be helpful to everyone. But then perhaps if we were to have God's eternal perspective on things, some things we call "gifts" here on earth, might be seen in heaven quite differently.
Thanks for your comments and for taking the time to give a thoughtful response.
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