Gift Giving

I remember hearing a statement many years ago.
Gifts are wasted on the young.
I bristled when I heard those words.
I did not agree with them.

The woman who said those words was talking about appreciation.
This woman felt that young people do not understand the gifts they have been given.
Young people, in her mind, think more of the here and now and not of the future.
Gifts that are not something they can enjoy now, tend to be dismissed.

I tumbled her words in my mind.
I thought back to when I was growing up.
I wanted to see if her words rang true.
I wanted so desperately to believe that she was wrong.

My mother had two sisters.
My aunts were very good to me.
I did not appreciate it at the time.
I thought of their gifts through the years; I thought of my response.

One aunt bought me a complete collection of hardback books.
It was an anthology of children’s literature.
Each book had a dust jacket.
There were twenty-four books in the collection.

I remember those books were on the shelf under my nightstand.
I enjoyed a few stories.
However, I never opened most of the books at the time.
I did not appreciate poetry and classic literature back then.

My other aunt used to give me a card each birthday.
Inside the card, she enclosed a savings bond.
To a child, that savings bond meant nothing.
I would have been thrilled with some toy that would be broken the next day.

Each aunt was thinking of the future.
As a child, I thought only of the present.
I was not thinking of the significance of their gifts.
I was only thinking about the silly toy that I did not receive, wrapped up with a bow.

I still have the collection of books from my aunt on one of my many bookshelves.
All twenty-four books are there; all the dust jackets are still intact.
I read many of those stories to my own children.
I treasure that collection of books.

The savings bonds were kept for many years.
Less than a year after we got married, we were ready to buy our first house.
Those savings bonds were helpful as part of our down payment on our first house.
I was so grateful for my aunt’s foresight.

My aunts were forward thinking when they gave those gifts to me.
In my naïveté I would rather have had a toy that would surely break after I received it.
They thought of the future.
I thought of the here and now.

I thought about that statement from all those years ago.
Gifts are wasted on the young.
As much as I wanted to dismiss those words and argue that they were incorrect, I could not.
Those gifts from my aunts were not appreciated at the time.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:17)

God the Father gives good gifts to His children.
Do we appreciate them?
Do we complain inside our hearts because they are this gift and not that gift?
Are we too immature in our faith to recognize how precious God’s gifts really are?

What were You thinking, God?
I really wanted this certain thing to happen by now, God.
You know that I asked You for this, God, but You’re not doing what I ask.
I really want this, God, but You seem to be saying, No.

We complain.
We lament.
We grumble.
We gripe.

God gave me this but I really wanted that.
I will just put God’s gift on the shelf.
God is withholding this from me.
God must not love me very much.

Lies.
All lies.
Lies the enemy wants us to believe.
Lies that make us question the goodness of God.

God is the Giver of all good gifts.
God knows what we cannot possibly know.
We ask God for things and have no idea of what we are asking.
We do not have a God’s eye view.

We judge God’s gifts using our limited vision.
We assess God’s provision by whether it matches our idea of what He should provide.
We question what God intended when He gave us something different from what we expected.
We are finite; God is infinite.

God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.
(John Piper)

God’s gifts are often unappreciated.
God’s gifts are frequently misunderstood.
God’s gifts far surpass anything we can ever ask or imagine.
God’s gifts are from His Hand.

I was guilty of being unappreciative all those years ago.
My aunts knew far more than I could ever understand.
How much more, God.
How much more should we trust the Giver.

May we grow in our faith so that God’s gifts are not wasted on our immature thinking.
May we appreciate the gifts from His hand even when we do not understand them.
May we trust the Giver and know that the gift is for our good and His glory.
May we rejoice that we are recipients of His great love lavished on us.

 

2 responses to “Gift Giving”

1. Thank you, Gina. As we are to thank the Lord “in everything,” I am overwhelmed just now at His love and grace in His gifts, even the hard gifts as well, for they are for our good, and for His glory. “Do not be grieved. The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

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   • Amen, Susie.
     Even more than the gifts, we love the Giver.
     Gina

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