Recently God gave me a gift that is not only complete unexpected but is greater than I anything I could have imagined. Picture, just by way of illustration, receiving a winning lottery ticket worth $100 million despite not playing the lottery.
And the gift is ongoing and growing. You could picture that $100 million being delivered in weekly installments of, say, $50,000. But the picture that comes to my mind is that of someone who is poor, destitute, living in a third world country with no reason to expect a life different than that of his father and his father’s father before him. But some benefactor (Oprah on vacation?) swoops in and provides him with a college education in America, all expenses paid.
In the old days, if I was that young man, I would be grateful and excited. I would joyfully begin my new life and then, within a few weeks, I would probably begin to worry about next semester. What if my benefactor stops paying my tuition? What if I don’t maintain the grade point average that my benefactor has in mind? (Never mind that no such requirement was ever mentioned.) What if this is all a dream, a brief interlude that will end as quickly as it began?
“How silly,” we would say. The gift is a gift. It will not be taken away. It is not contingent on your performance. Its intent is not to set you up for a fall. And it is not a partial gift: it will be completed.
I am grateful – not only for the gift but that God has been and is working in me an assurance that it is truly, in every sense of the word, a gift.
Enjoy!
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