Difficult Gifts

 July 31, 2022

Tomorrow we begin the second half of 2022. I don’t know why I said that; I don’t have any pearls of wisdom to glean from that observation…except perhaps this one: My Gratitude prompt for today is “Three difficult gifts.” Right now, that’s a hard one. I can only think of two difficult gifts: ‘04 when the church imploded, and now Nate’s cancer. To be sure, not everything else in my life has been easy; I’ve had my share of sorrow and challenges, but nothing that isn’t pretty much everyone’s lot in life.

Linda and I watched a movie about Virginia Hall, a British spy who worked in Vichy France during WWII, considered the most dangerous of spies by the Nazis. When I think of the courage of so many of these people who faced torture and death, or of Christians today in places like Afghanistan or Nigeria, or when I see people who have battled life-long disability, how can I say any of my life experiences have been difficult? Two in over 70 years of living is hardly worth mentioning. Maybe a third difficult gift will come someday, but it hasn’t yet been given.

And make no mistake; these difficult circumstances are gifts. They sound bad, but every challenge in life is a gift that offers the opportunity to grow deeper in faith and to lean harder upon God. The difficult gifts are no fun, but they are actually the best gifts we can receive, for they reveal to us our inner life—strengths and weaknesses we didn’t know we had. And if we are ready to receive it, they reveal to us the love of God in ways we cannot otherwise know. 

Difficult gifts—tonight I reflect on two of them in my experience, grateful for how they continue to shape me more in the image of Christ, the giver and object of the gift.