A Lesson in Gratitude

My family always exchanged Christmas gifts with my aunt and her family. I clearly remember the year that we gave my cousin, young Nathan, some model train tracks.

It was a great gift - an accessory to the train set his parents had bought him for Christmas. This extension set would enlarge the track and make it lots more fun to play. The only problem was, my aunt’s family hadn’t opened their gifts yet.

I don’t think anyone had thought about this at the time… until Nathan unwrapped his present. He looked at the track extensions - lonely, useless little pieces - and smiled and politely thanked us for the gift. He didn’t appear to have any idea what they were for, and even if he had, he couldn’t have done anything with them at all! I just wonder if he didn’t wish (until Christmas at least) that we’d asked him what he’d like, or at least come up with something a little more brilliant… But I have to give him credit – he didn’t turn up his nose or turn down the gift. He didn’t look around and whine for his brother’s gift instead. He accepted the puzzling, perhaps disappointing present he’d been given.

If only we could always do so well. Pastor Ben reminded us that the Holy Spirit has given gifts to each believer. But isn’t it often a lot like Nathan’s predicament? We struggle to identify the gift God has given us – What is it? And then we struggle to figure out what to do with it! Where does this fit in? Is something missing? Isn’t it all a mistake? Couldn’t God have come up with something more fun, more useful, more exciting…

I think from Nathan we can learn that God’s gifts are really great – we just need to be grateful even when we don’t see their purpose or yet understand just what we’re supposed to do with them. We need to accept them and hang on to them (even work to develop them while we’re waiting), watching for the opportunity to pull them out and put them in use.

Because they’ll snap into place as surely as Nathan’s train tracks did, a few days later. And the Body of Christ around us will be enlarged and encouraged when that happens.