Not just givers, but receivers

From “Sharing the Gifts of the Spirit: Attaining and Maintaining the Unity that is Ours”, based on Ephesians 4:1–16, by Mary Anne Isaak (USA)

When the Bible compares joints and ligaments with gifts of the Spirit, the comparison challenges the assumption that some people are only givers of gifts and that other people are only receivers of gifts in the body . . .

Fifteen years ago, my husband and I came to Kikwit, Congo to teach in a Mennonite Brethren school. I longed to be a giver, and to make a difference in people’s lives by giving of the gift of teaching that God had given me.

And God places this desire to be a giver within all of us.

During those years in Congo, I learned again that it is as I both give gifts, and receive gifts from others, that together we participate in building up the body of Christ.

During our second year in Kikwit, our first child was born. He was born five weeks early and had a number of medical problems. And then in those first few weeks, he didn’t have the energy to nurse and therefore had difficulty gaining weight.

I didn’t know much about babies. I was nervous and scared and I hardly slept at all for a week. Then one day, something changed.

My baby stopped fussing, stopped crying all together, and just lay there. I was convinced he was getting sicker. I did everything I knew how to do, and nothing seemed to help. After a few hours, I walked across to the home of one of my neighbours, Mama Thumbu.

I was just going to ask for some advice, but instead I started crying and crying, telling her that my baby was dying, and that I didn’t know what to do.

It was one of the first times I could acknowledge the real needs I had. And I think that, often, I have a difficult time acknowledging needs because in North America we are taught that self-sufficiency is a great virtue.

However, that evening, by expressing my needs, I was inviting Mama Thumbu to share her many gifts with me. With her large family, she had the experience of real babies while all I had was a book.

With her nurses’ training, she understood medical problems. With her kindness, she was like a mother to me when my own mother was thousands of miles away and I felt very alone.

Mama Thumbu immediately came to our home to examine my sick baby and after several careful moments, her eyes lit up and she began to laugh quietly.

“Your baby isn’t sick,” she told me, “Your baby has a full stomach. For the first time in his life, he has had enough to eat, and he is finally content.”

Not dying, finally content.

I can hardly tell you how grateful I was for the gift of love and comfort that Mama Thumbu shared with me.

That event was one of several in which I learned that to participate in the body, I need to recognize and share both my gifts and my needs so that gifts can flow back and forth, and so the entire body of Christ can be built up.

It is when there is sharing of time, help, material resources, talents, wisdom, experience, when there is sharing of gifts of the Holy Spirit back and forth among us, that is when the world can see how we love each other in the body of Christ.

And when there is sharing of gifts back and forth in the church, people from a broken and hurting world will be attracted to join the unified body of Christ.

Mary Anne Isaak (top picture) is a pastor at College Community Church, Clovis, Cal., on leave with husband Jon Isaak and their two children, during his sabbatical at Cambridge, England.