John ESENE                

     A man is a gift from God to himself. So, you are a gift from God to yourself. You have to accept yourself as a special gift and appreciate God’s gesture for giving yourself to you.  This way, you surely admit that you are ok. There is need for you to look deeply inside of you to know to the beauty therein which others see and love in you. You may not be able to see the entire gift you are to yourself and to others but as events unfold, your potentials will gradually come to your consciousness. At this juncture, your willingness to develop such potentials to assist yourself and others will dictate how fully human and fully alive you can be.

     “No one is an Island” they say. Hence as you see yourself as a gift to others, others are also gifts to you from God. These gifts are in various shapes and sizes: some small others big; some tightly wrapped while others are loosely wrapped; some exhibit ugly wraps just as others have beautiful wraps. What matters most is not the outward look of the gift but the very content of it. A beautiful egg may have a rotten yoke which the eyes cannot see until the egg is broken. Know you that the wrapping is not the gift. How willing are you to see the person next to you as a gift to you by God? Do you need to select from among these gifts?

      God imposed some gifts on us and we have no choice whatsoever to select among these special gifts: a father and a mother; a brother and a sister; a son and a daughter, etc. God willed them to you so to speak. When you accept these gifts for this purpose, you will live to celebrate them all your live. God is good and His gifts are good likewise. Jesus expects you to love every member of your family very dearly as precious gifts to you. How faithful are you to this calling?

      There is a special gift to your family, a gift to be determined by you at your marriageable state: your wife or husband. Adam was so lucky to have been given Eve directly by God Himself. Unfortunately, when they disobeyed God, he was quick to say, “The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Gen. 3:12. I do not want to persuade you to believe that Adam was blaming God. In our days, God allows you to search and find the bone of your bones. If he or she fails you, unlike Adam, you cannot blame God for that gift. The good news is that those who allow the Holy Spirit to lead them to their other half will never regret their matrimonial union.

     I am a gift to you just as you are to me. When you receive a gift, you accept both the wrapper and the content of the gift. Some gifts have beautiful content but ugly wrapped while some have ugly content but beautifully wrapped. You cannot have a gift that is entirely perfect: no one is perfect but God. Oftentimes I hear some men saying, “Look guys, I want to marry a beautiful girl that can go to places with me.” Some would say, “I want a girl with light complexion.” They harp so much on the outward signs that they do not care about the content of the gift which most successful couples consider important. To them, what make the gift worthwhile is the content and not the wrappers. “Not all that glitter that is gold.” Although, I am not saying, any gift beautifully wrapped cannot have a beautiful content. We have them here and there! Surely, once in a while, there are special deliveries.

     The person selecting the gift should remember that he or she is also a gift to the other. In other words, the other person has the right to select from among the gifts available to him or her. We are all gifts to one another and so, it has been. How ready and courageous are we to look inside of us to see the beauty therein? Are we ready to be given to others as gifts? Gifts from the Father for others? Some gifts might have been opened and abandoned before they get to you. Others might have been mishandled in the mail and so look rough before they get to you.

     Are there gifts about you with quality contents but with soiled wrappings such that you do not want to identify with them because of the society? If I am ashamed of God’s gift to me, can I say, I am not ashamed of the Giver (God) indirectly? For every gift God gives us, He has a purpose and He cannot give us what is not good: God is good all the time!

     There are gifts so beautifully wrapped or considered dear to us that we tend to possess them. When you possess them, you destroy their gifts. As you save them for yourself, you are sure to lose them but should you lose them for others, you will save them.

   “Father, you have given them to me, and I want them to be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory, the glory you gave me; for you love me before the world was made. I made you known to them, and I will continue to do so, in order that the love you have for me may be in them, and so that I also may be in them.” John 17:24, 26.

    Abba Father, I give you glory through Your Son this day, not only for myself and family, but to all who read this piece! Kindly give us the grace to recognize and appreciate the gifts you have given us and the gifts we are to others and remain thankful to you till that day when we shall arrive at your throne to behold and rest in your bosom through Our Lord Jesus Christ You Only Begotten Son. You are in Him just as He is in us, may you be in us till the end of time.  Amen!