Love is a Gift

Love is a gift. Love is a present with a bow on top. Love is a bouquet of flowers on Valentine’s Day. Love is a surprise on Wednesday. Love is a gift from a far away city at the end of a trip. Love is bringing Starbucks home on a cold night. My heart strings are untied when I unwrap the gift. They bind every package I give away.

But that’s just me. Years ago Bryan and I read the Five Love Languages. The book did not transform our marriage; it gave me a translation guide. Gift giving or receiving, doesn’t speak love to Bryan. When he wants every Christmas gift to be something practical and useful, with long term benefits (like a microwave) it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me. When he politely declines all gifts on his birthday, he’s not sacrificing joy, he’s content.

It’s easy to see how we might fail to understand each other.

God is a great gift Giver. I know the gift of life he’s given in Jesus Christ. The love He’s lavished on us; He’s no stingy Giver. I know every good and perfect gift comes down from Him. I know He gives the gift of the Spirit. Not everything I ask for, but everything I need; and promises every gift I need to rightly love  Christ. All of this I know, I have known.

We listened to a sermon on Sunday in the car, and in those words God gave me a gift. I untied the bowstrings, my heart strings, and peeked inside. He gives all His goodness to woo me to Christ. And I thought more carefully about God as the Great Gift Giver, speaking my “love language.”

God doesn’t just give presents on the expected occasions. He surprises. He says in Ephesians 3 He is “able to do far more abundantly than we ask or think.” I haven’t asked for it. I haven’t even thought about it. Do you know what that is? It’s a surprise.

God surprises on Wednesdays, and every other day besides.