by Christine Masssie

Created on: July 02, 2009   Last Updated: July 10, 2009

God has blessed me in so many ways it is hard to choose just one gift and declare it the best. I know that as I continue along life's path, more and more of the things I considered obstacles and curses have become the very things that I thank Him for the most. If I had to choose just one gift to call the best, I would say that the blessing of being able to recognize that God is always with me, especially during my most difficult trials. When I can remember that, I can draw his strength and be comforted even as my heart breaks.

Sometimes, when I consider all the marvelous people and talents of this world, I am tempted to describe my life as ordinary or nothing special, but when I truly reflect in my heart all the things that conspired to make me just who I am, I am struck by the perfection to which God created this experience for me.

There have been tragedies in my life. There have been tragedies in all of our lives, singularly important to us and collectively in our experience as a species. We yearn to find meaning and find purpose in violence and illness and cruelty. In anger and fear we demand to know the unknowable, we demand to know the mind of God. After our tragedy, after our fear, after our rage, after our tears, after all that there is our gift. A small quiet voice that comforts us and assures us that it is our blessing not to know the mind of God. If we are to receive the blessed gift of faith in a God, then we must accept that it is better to be guided than to guide the divine. If you can find as much peace in the questions that you ask as in the answers you receive, then you begin to understand what the gifts of God are. Most assuredly if it is our gift to believe that there is a God, then let it be a God beyond our own understanding.

My human nature is tempted to desire a God who works more like a Genie granting my wishes than a God who sees to my needs. As a creature bound to the laws of time and physicality, I rejoice in the limitless nature of my God. My personal journey, my own testament to the reality of free will, has led me to reject chaos and choose peace. God has granted me the greatest gift of his own voice in my still, quiet moments and the thirst to seek for Him in them more and more. The greatest gift from God is not a singular prayer answered or miracle preformed; the greatest gift is the discernment that all, all is a blessed and sacred gift carefully unfolding to bring you to just the thing your soul needs from this journey we call a life.

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