The Gift of Experience

How many of us consider our experience a gift? I don't just mean that we learn from experience, but from a stewardship perspective, when we are asked about our gifts, how do we answer?

If asked about my gifts, my immediate reaction is to talk about what I am good at and what I can do. I'm creative, I can think strategically, and I am a spiritual person.

But what about who I am? Like many, it is a different way of thinking for me to consider who I am and my experiences as one of my gifts.

Recently someone identified the experience of being a teen mom as one of her gifts. Wow! Now, she didn't necessarily lift it up as a good life choice, but 10 years later she views the experience as a gift. Viewing it as a gift, she has been able to offer her story and her experience to serve others in that situation. She has been able to give back with the gift of experience God allowed her to have.

What experiences do you have that you could name as gift?

- Have you experienced the birth of a child? The loss of a child?
- Are you happily married? Are you seperated or divorced? Have you lost a spouse?
- Have you gone through a life-changing or life-threatening illness?
- Do you have the experience of having a job? Have you ever lost a job or been unemployed?
- Are you a parent?
- Have you travelled and experienced another culture?
- Have you lived with someone with a disability? Do you have a disability?
- Do you own a home?
- Have you ever had to make a financial or life plan?

These experiences and so many more can and should be viewed as God-given gifts. It is so easy to think that gifts are simply talents or strengths, but they can be so much more. Viewing gifts with this wider lens gives us the opportunity to see God and our faith more clearly in our everyday life.

God, discipleship, and stewardship exist far beyond Sunday morning, but for many of us it is hard to see where they are in our daily lives when we feel distracted by status reports, dirty diapers, and the constant ring of the telephone. It is in finding the gift of these distractions and calling them out as gifts that we truly become a holy, meaning "set apart", people.

Recognizing and sharing these gifts of everyday experience is what makes us as Christians different than others in our society, those who believe they are plagued or controlled by these seemingly lesser experiences and distractions. In recognizing and sharing all our gifts of experience, minor and miraculous, we become joyful witnesses to God's ultimate generosity.

That is everyday stewardship.

What experience were you gifted with recently?