The Peak of Inspiration

Imagine a large pile of gifts.  Every kind of gift there is.  Gifts of song and speech.  Gifts of hospitality and companionship.  A friendly wave and a cheerful smile.  Friendship and fellowship.  A mug of hot coffee or a cup of cold water.  Everything that is pure and good represented as an individual package and wrapped in love.  All these gifts within arm’s reach of the Great White Throne.  Ready to be dispensed at a moment’s notice.  An inexhaustible pile.  For every gift given, two more take it’s place.  Love does that.  It multiplies everything it touches. 

Contrast this pile of gifts with the plight of humanity around us.  Sickness and heartache, hunger and thirst, needs of every kind and to every degree.  Lonesomeness begging for companionship, grief needing comfort, soul wounds looking for healing, heart pain crying for relief.  Every one of us living under the dreadful curse and so completely incapable of helping ourselves. 

And all the while there are these gifts somewhere above us that would heal us.  Gifts custom made for our circumstance and situation.  Gifts that will take us from weak to strong, from crippled to whole, from crying to singing.   A heavenly prescription from the Great Physician.

But there’s a problem.  How do these gifts get from up there to down here?  There’s a gap, a stretch of space that they must cross before they can reach us in our need.  They need a bridge, a transport, a delivery.  Call it what you want.  They’re up there.  We’re down here. 

So God creates a pathway, a channel.  He takes a pipe and wraps a heart around it.  Then wraps a body around the heart.  The top of the pipe surfaces in Heaven right beside that mound of gifts.  The other end passes through our heart and out to humanity.   Somehow that works.  God delivers, through us, the very things that we receive, in turn, from others.  The things that keep us alive, that keep us from giving in and giving up.   

There’s a catch.  At the bottom of the pipe, right before it exits our heart, God placed a valve, and he wrapped our hand around the control.  We have a choice.  We can close the valve and refuse to let all those good things continue out into the world.  Or we can throw the gate open, let it flow out, reach it’s intended destination, and provide the relief that is so desperately needed. 

I think our focus is a little off sometimes.  We ascribe gifts to people.  And somehow the more you have the more good you can do, the more popular you are.  We admire those that show great talent.  Beautiful songs and profound speeches.  Talents of hospitality and empathy.  But what if the real gift is in the receiving, not the giving?  The perfect harmony, the inspiring message, the hugs and the shoulder beside you, that’s a gift for you.  It’s God’s gift to you.  Through another.   It’s personal and very real.   

There’s a group of people in Kansas that could show you how this works.  I know, I was there.  Their valves were wide open, unobstructed.  The gifts of care and sympathy piled up around our feet, overwhelmed our hearts, spilled out our eyes and ran down our cheeks.  Arms have wrapped around our shoulders and our phones are full of praying hands.  Songs were sent and meals delivered.  God sent it all.  And they gave it all. 

On my way home from my father’s funeral, I stopped for a coffee.  A couple of ladies in front of me paid for my drink.  They did not know what we had been through.  But they had the valve open, and when God dropped that gift of love, it found it’s mark.  They put a Band-Aid on a wound I didn’t know I had.  Someone shoveled the snow off our sidewalks before we got home.  Another gift, another wound medicated.  It could be that each of these folks had a knack for seeing a need, a special talent for caring.  I’m sure they did.  Maybe their heart could sense the pain in mine, and they responded like only they could.  It does seem like some pipes are able to deliver certain gifts more efficiently than others.  But that doesn’t change the fact that the gift needs to be given, not possessed.  These gifts weren’t given to us to own but shared and passed out. 

Keep the valve open.  Let everything out that comes in.  Be a waterfall of gifts from heaven.  Keep none of it back.  Don’t allow it to pile up and push you down.  You weren’t meant to carry that.  When it comes down, let it go.  Give it.  Pass it on.  And here’s the beautiful part.  As that gift drops from Heaven and passes through your heart, it pulls a breeze down with it.  Close your eyes, wait for it.  That good feeling you have?  That’s a gift too, a thank you note from God.  And it’s yours to keep.