On Receiving A Gift

At the midnight service in church Christmas Eve, something disturbed my equilibrium.

As Ginny and I attended the service, I anticipated singing Silent Night, holding up a pretty candle, and feeling nostalgic about Christmases past.

But just before the service started…

First I should say that six or eight weeks ago, I told someone about something that concerned me. On Christmas Eve I discovered that that someone told someone else who… Well, you know how that goes.

Well there I was in church listening to the organ prelude, praying a bit, feeling sentimental, observing the cleavage of a woman in an extremely low-cut Christmas dress a couple of pews away, minding my own business,

Then, just before the midnight service started, a wealthy gentleman came over to the big stone pillar I hide behind when in church and announced that he intended to help me with the matter that concerned me. In pure Christian charity, he offered to bail me out. He was only being kind.

I took it wrong.

I reacted as though he had said, “John Cowart, you failure. You looser. You no-good sorry excuse for a husband. You should have provided for your wife better than you do, you stupid, useless drone. Now I’m going to have to step in and straighten out the mess you’ve made of your life and marriage, you pathetic, pitiful bum”.

That’s not what he said; that’s what I felt.

Here he offered me a gift which involves a considerable amount of money, and I felt offended.

His offered gift struck me as an affront.

What business is it of his how I provide for my wife? In fact, why is my private business being talked about by people who are in no way involved?

I don’t even belong to that church; I’m just visiting.

I balked big time.

Got my ass on my shoulder and sulked. Wanted to rev up my lawnmower and shred poinsettias. Wanted to stuff my candle someplace where it could never be lit. Wanted to pluck the wings off angels. Wanted to tell the low-cut woman to put on a sweater. Wanted to stomp out without taking communion. Wanted to huff and puff and… Well, that service was a wash.

Why is it so hard for me to receive?

Somebody said it is more blessed to give than to receive.

A lot He knew!

It’s easy for me to give. Makes me feel important. Empowered. A contributor. One of the blessed prosperous.

But to receive—that’s hard. It’s humiliating. It means I have to acknowledge my weakness, my neediness, my lower station. It makes me beholden.

When I first became a Christian, I remember what a struggle I had with the idea of receiving salvation as a gift from God. I felt I should earn it so that God would be beholden to me.

John’s Gospel says, “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name”.

I think it would be easier to be saved if God only asked that I swing over a river full of crocodiles holding the rope in my teeth while carrying an anvil. It would take a real man to get saved that way.

But to acknowledge that I have no merit, that I am a spiritual paraplegic, that I need Someone to save me because I don’t stand a chance otherwise. That I live every day on life support. That the building is burning and I can’t get out, that I need a Savior, that I have to receive Him—that’s hard.

So, on Christmas Eve and in the days following, I’ve behaved churlishly.

Instead of feeling gratitude for the help offered, I’ve felt resentful, offended, hurt.

Instead of seeing the offered help as a gift of love from the Father through the hand of man, I’ve wished I’d never confided in anyone about my concern in the first place. I’ve fumed and worried and twisted this situation in my mind again and again.

So much for the openness and transparency I wrote about on New Year’s Eve.

Oh well, this is an on-going situation.

May the Lord teach me how to cope with it… and maybe, eventually, be thankful.

What a crock! Changes in attitude, heart-changes, are also a gift from above, and have to be received. How you react to a gift, reveals what you are inside… and right now, I don’t like what I’m seeing within myself very much.

Ugly Ingratitude overshadows all my thoughts since Christmas Eve.

I don’t know how to cope with this.

What’s worse, I ‘m not sure I want to know.

Lord, be merciful to John Cowart.