2023-04-06 A Meditation on Divine Gift

“For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.” (2 Co 7:5–9 ESV)

To gift to another person the genuine experience of knowing Jesus, of Sonship and Daughtership, this is divine. Divine in that most of the time our premise is, “Put a little confidence in me, and I’ll show you what I can do!” No, if some are blustery, the genuine convert is reckoning with freely-given love. Love that desires for her or him to overcome, yet until that day, love that requires nothing by way of proving ourselves.

The Lord has use of a team, not just individualistic high-flyers, but even and especially those we tend to overlook. The Lord knows those who are His, and they in turn are encouraged boldly to know that they are God’s people. To know that their ideas matter, their inventions of mind matter, their inspiration of the heart matters, their awkward and ungainly matter-of-fact personality matters. Indeed, we can be beloved of the Father in such high fashion that we literally change our mind about all those things that are “wrong” with us. We decide to accept knowing ourselves to be the rejectamenta of this world, for, no matter, we have a loving Father for this world and the next.

No matter, we know the good boss, who affords us some space. Who or what He is, in the Pantheon of high ones, is intuited, but not the point: the point is that He can afford to invest, in the thought that maybe one day we will, on a lark, prove His salvation well-minded. It was well done to support us. We have become hands and feet of the Body. Yet it was well-minded to love us, simply because of a little confidence gained. A little rebellion tamed. A little pause in the hectic shouting of the addict.