Gifts
Last Sunday and Monday we had the blessing of a visit from a good friend from Atlanta. She is making a solo 24-day cross-country road trip, staying with friends and relatives as she drove from Atlanta to Chattanooga, to Missouri and to Denver, to Provo, to Olalla and Gig Harbor, Washington, then to The Dalles and Portland in Oregon, and on to her stops in California, Richmond and, at last, our apartment. She arrived at about 6:30 on Sunday night, and she was leaving for New Mexico on Tuesday morning. We had to make the best of our time with her; every moment was precious.
Our friend has a huge heart and a joyful disposition. She is enthusiastic about her two wonderful daughters, about life and all the people she loves. She is always ready to welcome new people into her delighting heart. You smile when you see her; you just can’t help yourself. You give up “catching up” on the time and distance between you, and just enjoy the experience she is. Which is why it was such a mistake to have dinner at a local, trendy pizza place.
We waited for a table for about 15 minutes. Conversation was pointless in the waiting area because it was crowded and the noise level was high. We escaped to a table and studied our menus. When we were ready to order and to get back to the conversation, we met Todd, our waitperson. Todd was charming and funny and enjoyed interacting with the customers. In fact, this was one of those restaurants where the staff members keep their jobs based on their abilities to be charming and entertaining, to establish and develop personal rapport whether the customers are interested or not. Todd demonstrated a new definition for waitperson: no longer someone who waits on your needs; now, it is you who must wait while someone finishes his shtick and finally takes your order.
We didn’t have another meal in a restaurant during her visit. We didn’t want any more interruptions or break-downs to our newly re-established community.
Our friend has been richly blessed with the gift of love, and she gives it freely to others. She finds joy through her connections with people, and she gives her time and energy and love to enliven all those relationships. She is an example of what Paul wrote about to the Ephesians: she bear[s] with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. She demonstrates that all of us are gifted in special ways, as she is, to build up the body of Christ and to maintain and value our unity.
I find that having a friend like this helps me to understand what our gifts are. I tend to confuse gifts with talents or with jobs or certificates or skills. But gifts are the essential spiritual qualities we receive, free of charge, to live our lives in Christ and to invite others to do the same. Our gifts are the graces that bring us the greatest joy when we use them for the betterment of others, to build the reign of heaven in the here and now.
In What Color is your Parachute, 2009, (Ten Speed Press, 2009) Richard Nelson Bolles describes our lives as having forks in the road where we can make a decision that is either life-giving or life-defeating. When we make life-giving choices, we use our gifts as they are designed by God to be used. When we make life-defeating choices, we deny our gifts, and miss opportunities to bless the world.
In Wishful Thinking, a Theological ABC (© 1973, HarperCollins, Inc.), Fred Buechner defines vocation as, “the work one is called to by God.” God’s work may include a paycheck, or it may not. We are all, and are always, called by God to spread love, justice, and peace. Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
It’s a simple statement: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” It requires only enough perception to know what makes you happy and to identify the world’s deep hunger. Can you find the world’s deep hunger in your place of work? Can you find it behind a counter? Is it visible in the face of someone in a medical waiting room? When we find ourselves at the intersection of our gladness and the world’s deep hunger, our gifts will be evident to us and their use will be clear. Our challenge will be to go ahead and use them. The world’s deep hunger is so great it demands many hands and hearts to address it. Habitat for Humanity, for example, has few architects but many, many painters. The projects depend just as much on the respect and care the painters bring as that of any specialist. Our economy calls us to bring forth our gifts of compassion and of giving encouragement. Or our gifts of humor. The world’s deep hunger is so great it demands that we call forth and use these gifts and our gifts of wisdom, faith, strength, love, or justice to name just a few. God’s gift list is endless and God’s generosity is inexhaustible. We have the gifts. We need just make use of them with our hands and our voices and our hearts. We have the context of our church community to exercise our gifts, to practice what God calls us to be. Using and describing our experiences of giftedness with one another helps us to see the richness of opportunity available to us to love as Christ has loved, and to live as Christ has lived, and to go and do the same in our families, community, country, or world.
In the Gospel today, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” Christ’s very being is another gift, generously given and for all to share. It is the gift that emboldens and encourages us to use our gifts to build one another up. It is through the bread of life that we join in one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Let us come together as one to strengthen our faiths and to share our gifts freely. Along with my country-crossing friend, let us all make people smile when they see us because of the love and joy we receive and give so freely.