The Burden Gift

We have all received gifts that put a burden on us in one way or another. Maybe it was a classic sweater from your favorite aunt that deserves to be hidden from society forever, but she is coming to visit this weekend and the day promises to be sweater weather. So, you have been talking about taking up a new hobby, one you have talked about doing for years. It is that one that you like to talk about but you know you really won’t do it. Then some wonderful person gives you a gift card to get you started. Oh, joy! Of course, you do have a choice, don’t you? When your aunt asks why you aren’t wearing the sweater, you can suddenly remember that you wore it last weekend, spilled something on it and when you took it to the cleaners, they said it was ruined and you had to throw it away. As for the gift card, surely you can come with some reason why you can’t do it, some physical condition that is at least somewhat believable. Just hold that set of thoughts for a moment while go on to the next part.

Decisions, who needs them? Which class do you take in college? Which restaurant do you want to go to? If that restaurant is one of those with a 10 page menu, the agony really sets in. I am famous for reading every selection on every page and then invariably choosing something with chicken as the main ingredient…except for a steak house, then it is the rib eye. We are constantly faced with making decisions and some of us solve the problem by always making the same one every time. I have learned to avoid panic in a Chinese restaurant by always ordering kung pao chicken. See, there is a way…of course, there was a time when I had to read the whole menu.

In many ways, it would be so much better if we had only two or three items to decide between. Better yet, someone to tell us which one we wanted so we could put the blame on someone else if it turned out to be the wrong decision. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way and in this society, we would rapidly build up resentment to always being told which choice to take.

God has given us a wonderful gift. The string he attached to it is that he expects us to use it all the time. It also has to do with making decisions. That gift is the one called Free Will. He has given us the right to make whichever decision we want to make at any point in our life. That isn’t to say that he hasn’t given us a set of guidelines to help us make the best decision, but he also allows us to make other ones in the same circumstance. Just think how much easier it would be if he made sure we didn’t make the wrong decision. When we head done that wrong path, he is surely sitting there watching and thinking, “You’ll be sorry.” The great thing is when we figure it out, and tell him we messed up and apologize, he forgives us.

Free will is the most marvelous and wonderful of gifts. It also carries a burden. The burden is to make sure that we use that gift in the correct way, that we use it to make the right choices and the best decisions. He will not interfere directly with the direction we choose, but he may try to stop us by tossing a roadblock in our way that will make us stop and reconsider. He is not above getting in our face and telling us we need to stop doing the wrong thing and do what he needs us to do. We can be foolish and stomp our foot and tell him “no!” That would be a really dumb move, but the possibility exists that there are those who have done it. You have to wonder where they will be spending eternity when the rest of us are with the Master Gift-Giver.

Okay, now we have that sin thing addressed. In other words, if you have the chance to sin, it is your choice to do so. That is how your relationship with God works. So, let’s talk about your relationships with other people. We have all used the excuse for our actions that “you made me…” The last word
could be “happy/sad/glad/mad/angry/forgive/love” and so forth. Just pick the one that works for you at the time. The problem with that excuse is it isn’t true. No one can make you do anything, especially have a particular feeling. Think about it: if God, who is all-powerful, can’t make you have a certain feeling, how can one of your fellow humans? What someone else does is to create a situation and then you make the decision on how to respond to it. You, and you alone, are responsible for your actions and feelings. You don’t like that? You don’t really believe it? Tough! You have the free will and you get to use it. See what I meant about a gift with a burden? Part of that burden is being honest with yourself and not putting the responsibility on someone else. It isn’t always negative. Look over that list again. It means you fell in love because it was the right thing to do and you decided to do it.

How are you doing with your gift? Are you using it wisely? Not always? Well, as I said above, God has a plan to take care of those times and to help you get back to making better decisions. If fact, he is so serious about it, he sent his only Son to help us out.