A Gift… The Gift

THURS., DEC. 12, 1991, 5:33 AM
FARM, STUDY

This is the season of gift-giving. You are not especially good at gift-giving… a bit better at gift-receiving. I am superior, by definition, at giving gifts, but all those who receive from Me are not equally delighted in what I bestow. So let’s talk about gifts, early on a wet morning.

My major gift, of course, is the gift of Myself. This should also be true with you, as with anyone who has a reasonably well-developed spirit. If you are concerned about what to give someone for whom you really care consider, finally, how you can give yourself in some meaningful, unique way.

I have told you before that I have had My hand on you since you were a youth. You don’t remember many details of My presence during those years, but it was I who kept you active in the Methodist youth group while you were also active in school, in Comus, and in athletics. You do remember when I brought you to your knees in prayer on your way to Camp Radford. It was a dramatic moment, but I was not yet ready to give you the gift of Myself.

I helped keep you in relationship with Me and the church through your Navy time, your college years, and the years at Punahou. You were a reasonably good churchman, a slightly above average Christian in the mainline tradition. Then I made My first significant move. I offered you “born-again” status and the gift of grace. Could you have rejected My offer? By your cultural and Christian understanding you could have, but actually… no. Free will is a very relative aspect of self. It is “free” when I am not exerting My Will. Then it hasn’t much of a chance (could you truly be elsewhere than here at this moment, doing something else? Of course not.) I wanted you to be a unique Presbyterian, so first I had to let you know that what the Scriptures say about grace and chosenness is really true. It wasn’t dramatic, but you responded.

Oh, yes. Earlier I had guided you to remain in teaching… and later to realize that you have done this before… that this is your ongoing life work. I then guided you in your writing career. At My bidding you gave some time and attention to an early morning writing meditation, mainly to establish this as a practice to which you would return some years later. In Mabel’s case I took her away from her family life. With you I allowed you almost to conclude your active parenting before The Gift.

Then I came with My Gift, symbolically attached to one of your good writing projects. The manuscript was nowhere to be found. You turned to Me and offered that to which I guided you. You returned to early morning writing, and you persisted, despite no clear direction from Me. The Gift was ready, and I gave it. You were not mentally prepared for such a change in who you seemed to be, but spiritually you were, and I knew this. It has not been a picture-perfect relationship, but it is perfect by definition because it is as I shaped it to be. It is not dramatically charismatic. Your Gift did not come in a packed church before an amazed congregation, with shouts of praise in an unintelligible prayer language.

No, you just sit down in this developed liturgical style and write what you hear Me tell you. When you try to analyze it (as you do from time to time), it is slightly rational and mostly mystical. As you expressed yesterday your task is to be an educator, a teacher. Your specific task is to help reintroduce the spiritual dimension into your culture’s secular concept of health. You do this in various ways, but one is in how you are with classes and other groups with whom you interact.