Many of us have experienced the custom of exchanging gifts. The person receiving the gift has no say in the matter and some end up getting exactly what they want, while others must accept the one with which they were given. Sometimes the gift received is used, useless, broken or bawdy. We wonder why anyone would give it and why it was we who received it, and sometimes our responses are less favourable than what they would normally be.
Life is somewhat like this custom. Each new day is a gift to be opened.
Sometimes we get exactly what we want; other times, what we need. Sometimes the gift is one we would rather not have been given; sometimes we want the life others have been given, and sometimes, when we don't want to deal with what's been given us, we pass the responsibility on to someone else -- we trade the gift, as it were.
Sometimes it's not possible to see it as a gift at all, and we question Why? or Why me?
It is at this time, perhaps more than ever, that we accept and utilize God's gift of choice to us -- not choice in what we are given, but in how we may choose to respond to what we are given. We have the choice in times of tragedy to accept and allow the help, love and comfort of others, and the choice to share with others in our times of triumph.
Philippians 3:13,14
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
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