One thousand gifts sounds like a lot. If you had one
thousands gifts listed on your Christmas shopping list, you’d
have to start in July to shop for everything, wrap it all, and then deliver or
mail the packages on time.
Currently, I’m challenged by the study we are doing in the
women’s ministry at my church, Northwest Fellowship, to list one thousand gifts
I’ve received from God. The study is excellent and the teaching videos that
accompany it are soothing and bucolic, narrated by the study’s lovely,
soft-spoken author Ann Voskamp.
As I consider this challenge and begin my list of one
thousand gifts, I’m beginning to think there may be that many gifts bestowed on
me by the Creator in one day. Each day. And inside each gift is another gift,
and if I take the time (a whole other topic unto itself) to examine each gift,
I can began to see these many other gifts inside.
If I could take one of God’s gifts into my hand and slowly
with purpose unwrap it, I would begin to see more gifts. I would turn it
around, look at it closely on all sides, I would see that each of God’s gifts are
multi-faceted like a perfectly cut gem, affecting me and changing me in the
ways I need it most. The gift I received and unwrapped today solidified that
thought.
The first gift I’m unwrapping in this series of counting one
thousand gifts is the gift of God’s word. In the study guide for the Bible
study aptly titled “One Thousand Gifts,” I was instructed to read Matthew
14:15-21, which describes a miraculous feeding of over five thousand people.
With the concept of God’s gifts still rattling around in my head, I read the
passage. It correlated perfectly with many facets in my life right now. It’s a
gift. A gift that calls for unwrapping.
I read about how a large group of people followed Jesus and
He had compassion on them. He healed their sick, as I personally have experienced
Him doing, and daily ask Him to do for myself and for others.
It was evening in the story, as it is now, as it is just
about every time I write.
Their need was great, as is mine. The hour was late and the
place was desolate. The Amplified Bible lists the setting as “remote and
barren.” Exactly how I’ve been feeling as of late. Night after night during my
writing time, I stare at the pesky little blinking cursor on the Word document
that houses the latest novel I’m working on. It flashes impatiently waiting for
me to type out some witty and entertaining yet spiritually insightful stream of
consciousness to “feed” those who would read it and be satisfied of both head
and heart. Blink, blink, blink. Nothing comes. Desolate, remote, barren. And
the hour grows later.
The disciples told Jesus (mistake #1 – telling Jesus what to
do as if He didn’t already have an awesome plan. I mean, didn’t they just see Him heal a bunch of sick
people? But I digress…) to tell the crowd to go away so they can get fed
somewhere else. It’s like me and my whining, “Lord, I can’t do this. I don’t
know what to write. I’m too desolate…tired, empty and missing my beloved husband
who is out of town on business.” As if to say to Him, give this task to someone
else.
He says to the disciples--and to me, “You give them something to eat.”
Like the disciples, I point to the fact that I have nothing
to give, except, maybe this little bit of desire to tell stories to get people
to think about God and knowing Him better. I see it like five loaves of bread
and two fish. Hardly enough to satisfy five hungry souls, let alone five
thousand.
Five loaves. My twisted mind flashes to a photograph I once
saw that was taken by my one of my favorite photographers, Robert Doisneau.
The picture was of Picasso sitting at a dinner table. He had two sets of five
tiny loaves of bread spread out in front of him perfectly placed as if they were his chubby
fingers resting at the edge of the table. It was hilarious.
I look down at my hands hovering over the keyboard. Scarred
and purple from bouts with Raynaud’s Syndrome. A finger on one hand is a
struggle to straighten; another digit is recently healed so now I can type with
it.
Two fish. I think
about the other necessary tool for writing, the mind. Two halves of a brain,
filled with thoughts swimming about randomly. Thoughts that are wildly creative
and others not so much, like, “did I turn my flat iron off?”
Like the disciples, I admit that this is all I have. So when
the Lord commands, “Bring them to Me,” I do as He says.
He ordered the people to sit down on the grass. So, instead
of roaming about my house distractedly performing little tasks, I stay seated
on my rhymes-with-grass, at my desk in front of my computer. I sit still and
pray, giving Him my hands and all of my mind.
Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to
heaven, He blessed them. And broke them. And He gave them back to the disciples
who then gave them to the crowd. And they all ate and were satisfied, and there
was even bread left over, twelve baskets full.
He received, blessed, broke, and gave back, and gave back in
abundance. I need to receive His blessed breaking of my reliance on myself to
create, and use it to give out to others of what He has given, knowing they
will be satisfied abundantly because of what He did.
I look down at the left-hand corner of my screen and notice
that I have written nearly one thousand words, and will probably be slightly
over that amount when this is finished. Each word a gift of His giving, proof
of His working in me. One gift of a Bible verse to me contained one thousands
gifts in it. One thousand gifts in one day. In one sitting. With the blessing
and breaking and receiving from God, this gift will in turn, God-willing, be a gift
to someone else. (1,068 words, in case you’re wondering.)
