Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it--because it does. Give yourselves to the gifts God gives you. (The Message)
God gives us many gifts and says that when we use our gifts, we must do them with love. I know in this book, God is talking about gifts like spiritual gifts and not the type of gift that came to my mind. But this a story of a gift I couldn't forget. My friend, Jane, told me the story yesterday.
The story is about her four year old grandson who lives in another state and who she doesn't get to see as often as she would like. It's a story of a telephone call that lasted 3 1/2 hours and it wasn't just an idle chatter call, the regular hi and how are you stuff. This call was all about him,
what he wanted to say and it consisted of listening to him talk about everything he was doing at that moment, listening to him play a video game and hearing (and asking her to see) every move he made, it was having a virtual supper with him and then listening to his mom read him his bedtime stories, plus that extra one story. He wanted to keep the phone in bed beside him all night and he wanted Grammie to be there when he woke up.
Paul is talking about gifts of prophecy in verse 14, he insists (NIV) on whatever is done in the church must contribute to the building up of the body and love is the means by which spiritual gifts are made effective.
Jane is a constant in her grandson's life and when she can't be with him, she gets creative. He is her love and she is finding ways to give as much of herself to him as she can. The TLB version says, 'let love be your greatest aim.'
I guess I'm see a parallel in this. Jane not only uses her gifts inside the church and does it with love, but uses them outside as well. She looks to build up people as God says to do and one of those persons is her grandson. She uses her gifts for her gift.
Nancy
