“The meaning of life is to find
your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away!”
— Dr. Ike Reighard
There are, of course, many answers
to the title of this article; many worthwhile and valid answers. This is but
one thesis with which we can hang on to, and the beauty of this one is it holds
true to the Ancient Path of blessing—when we bless the Lord, the Lord
blesses us.
All we have to do is find out what
blesses the Lord by what we can
do.
Intrinsic to what blesses the Lord is what the Lord has given us: our personalities, our experiences, our
abilities and capacities, our struggles, our hearts, and our gifts. Perhaps it
is the last of these that holds the secret to our passions—that our gifting entwines our personalities, experiences, abilities,
capacities, struggles, and our heart, for what and how we may give.
Our giving pleases God. And
pleasing God is the purpose of life.
***
Probably the most intriguing of
all challenges in life is to find our path; to find our calling; to establish
ourselves—our identities.
What’s central to this exercise is
to find our gift. Of course, we have many. Though some gifts hold a special
significance, one gift may blow the rest away in determinations of passion that
well up effervescently; that which we can barely control.
Tremendous meaning is found in
discovering the gift that sets our lives on fire, igniting ours hearts towards
the potential that was inlaid possibly since before time immemorial (so far as
we were personally concerned).
God has gifted all of us in
special and unique ways to make a difference in life; not for ourselves, but
for his glory. And when God is glorified in and through us, God is blessed, and
we, very personally, are blessed in that transaction.
By that transaction we are being
transformed more from glory to glory.
***
So, finding our gift—that thing
that sets our hearts alight—is probably easier than we think it is, but we tend
to limit ourselves by not going after it. We think of the length of the journey
required in developing our gift: the years of study or the investment of time
in gaining experience, credibility, and points on the board. We get dejected.
Expanding on our gifts requires
commitment—that goes without saying.
With commitment we find not only
are we blessed by God in being a blessing to God, but God asks us to do
something bizarre: when we have this thing we are to give it away.
The best of gifts are given away.
We learn that the best of
blessings occurs within us as we give our gifts with absolute abandon.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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