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Gifts

             For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

 

            This is one of those verses that you may have learned in Sunday School as a child. As kids, we were probably a little more in tune with the notion of gifts. If someone handed something to us, it was a gift. Eventually, we realized that we were entitled to the things handed to us. It was the responsibility of the givers to provide things to us. I don’t recall when, but at some point, I reached the conclusion that if the thing I was given as a gift was something that the person would have gotten me anyway – like clothes, the thing received wasn’t really a gift. It was just being dressed up to look like a gift so the person giving it didn’t have to spend more money or think. Those gifts were cop-outs.

            I think that idea began to change when I was at a retreat. People associated with the retreat made mostly cheap gifts – bookmarks with long pieces of yarn attached were common. As I was reading them and setting them aside, God said along the lines of “Those are gifts of love from those people. In rejecting the gift, you are rejecting their love.”

            No, I’m not good about gifts, and I suspect I’m not alone. I’m too interested in being in control of the situation. I want to dictate the terms. In other words, I’m more interested in earning a wage, because that doesn’t put me in debt to the one who gives it to me. I’m better about a wage because I’ve earned something and it’s only reasonable that I should have a say in what that something is and the conditions under which I get paid. This takes us back to Genesis, and Adam and Eve desiring to be “like God.” We want to be like God and dictate the terms. Wages are more comfortable even when they’re bad.

                But the problem with eternal life is that we can’t earn it. This is the mistake most religions make. One either is granted eternal life because you’ve lived up to some standard, or everyone gets in, meaning that there is no justice. The Judeo/Christian tradition is different because it acknowledges that man can’t earn eternal life. It must be a gift. It cannot be acquired any other way.

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