Life is full of surprises. And if you're a Christ-follower, I believe there are even MORE surprises. Because the life of faith is the life of being open to whatever God chooses to bring into our lives.
Which means sometimes we DON'T get the gifts we want and we DO get the gifts we weren't looking for. It's a genuine adventure. And to make it even MORE interesting...sometimes the gifts don't LOOK like gifts.
Take the gift of my son being hit by a car when he was in the fourth grade. When I heard him scream and leaped from the bus to see him lying curiously UNDER a car, I could not have imagined that this would be a blessing as his mom and I took turns at the hospital night after night, day after day until he was fitted into a full body cast and brought home only to live in a reclining wheel chair. We developed a heightened sense of humor through it all and I learned that just about everything in life can be put on the back burner given proper motivation...even church stuff!
Or, take the gift of my wife's AVM (arterial venal malformation). For the better part of 3 years we lived with the possibility of a brain aneurysm which could have caused instant death. The gift was that we learned to live NOW...TODAY.
Neither of these LOOKED like gifts, but God taught us plenty in the process.
Maybe the bottom line is simply this: God can make good come from all KINDS of things...sort of a Romans 8:28 thing.
And perhaps with that in mind, I should live less about the gifts I haven't gotten and instead, be especially mindful of the many gifts around me. He's a GREAT God with a GOOD heart. And His gifts are wonderful...even the ones we don't recognize.
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