A Gift Given

 by Marcia Lee Laycock

“Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that. And it’s not Versailles. It’s a brick wall with a ray of sunlight falling on it.” (Marilynne Robinson, The Paris Review 2008)

When I read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson I remember thinking it was so simple, so plain, so amazing. And there’s the key to be grasped. Great writing is simple, plain, dealing with the ordinary, yet it draws us to the extraordinary, the Divine within.

My brother used to collect odd pieces of wood to carve into shapes of animals and birds. I often walked with him along the north shore of Lake Huron, searching for driftwood. Once I offered him a length of freshly cut two by four. He rejected it. “Look for something with scars,” he’d said, ”something with twists and turns.” He wanted ordinary driftwood marked by its own unique journey through life. Those are the pieces that became lovely when the knife cut into them, shaped them and revealed what had been hidden. Those are the pieces I remember.

And the pieces of writing I remember are those that do the same - take characters who are ordinary, scarred, characters whose lives have taken many twists and turns, and fold them into stories that give us moments frozen in time, frozen into pictures of the Divine. Like the moment in Les Miserables when the priest hands the candlesticks to Jean Valjean - an ordinary man, a convict, grasps the mercy that has been granted him and his life is forever changed. It is so simple, so plain, so amazing that we stand in awe.

And that is the gift given to writers of faith – that we are driven to search out and grasp those moments poured into us from God’s own heart, then use words to reveal them, and Him, to others. It is then that we bring the Divine to those ordinary moments, for ourselves and for our readers. Together we pause, catch our breath, because we all have glimpsed the Divine, have seen beyond the ordinary to a more true reality.

It is a most holy pursuit, one that teaches us as we teach, reveals beauty and truth to us as we reveal it to others. The pursuit is part of our ordinary journey, one that will take us down many twists and turns and sometimes leave us scarred. But it is a task ordained, a gift given in love. 

Merry Christmas. one and all. 

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Marcia will be celebrating Christmas with her family in central Alberta Canada. To learn more about her writing/speaking ministry visit her website

It's not too late to order these ebooks for Christmas -

Missing Christmas - Stuck in a small northern town. Baah Humbug!

An Earthly Treasure - Christmas Future- Will there still be faith? Will there still be miracles?

An Unexpected Glory - A Christmas Pageant that seemed all wrong

The Twelve Days of Christmas -12 Short Stories to bring you close to the true meaning of Christmas

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God’s Gifts are Not For You

By Marcia Lee Laycock

“Did you have a good Christmas? What did you get?”

Those two sentences seem to go hand in hand. I used to hear them a lot in times past, as people chatted with my kids. The girls always gave the same answer, naming a couple of their favorite gifts. As I listened to the exchange, I chuckled to myself. There were a couple of presents given one year that were not really intended for the recipient. One of the girls gave “the family” a large perfumed candle. “To go in the bathroom,” she said, grinning. The rest of us grinned back - we all knew who spent hours in the tub.

You’ve probably been given one or two gifts of that sort at some point, if not at Christmas, perhaps for your birthday. Many wives have received such “useful” presents - a set of pots and pans; a blender; an iron. I remember one my husband gave me many years ago. We were building a house at the time so I suppose it was a practical gift, but a shiny new Spalding saw was not what I had envisioned for my birthday! He grinned a lot when he gave it to me, like my daughter did when we unwrapped that candle. I knew who was going to do the sawing.

Like that candle and that saw, God’s gifts are not just intended for the recipient. He intends to use them Himself. It is up to us to put hands and feet to those intentions by serving others. The prophet Isaiah new this when he said - “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.” (Isaiah 50:4) The writer of 1 Corinthians also knew the principle well. He stresses that the gifts God gives are intended, not for the benefit or honor of those employing them, but for the “strengthening of the church.”(1Cor.14:26) The apostle Peter makes this clear when he says – “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” (1 Peter 4:10)

God’s gifts are intended for others, but we also benefit when we use what we have been given, both spiritual gifts and natural talents, to that end. There is no greater sense of fulfillment and satisfaction than that which comes when we have used what we have been given to strengthen others. Whether it is in providing a meal on Christmas day for those in need, teaching Mathematics in grade 2, providing efficient secretarial skills in an office, digging a ditch for a sewer line or a post hole for a fence to keep the cows in, preaching a sermon on Sunday morning or writing a novel that touches the hearts of its readers; if you are using the gifts God gave you, you will be blessed.

So. Did you have a good Christmas? What did you get?

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Marcia Lee Laycock writes from central Alberta Canada where she is a pastor's wife and mother of three adult daughters. She was the winner of The Best New Canadian Christian Author Award for her novel, One Smooth Stone and also has two devotional books in print. Her work has been endorsed by Sigmund Brouwer, Janette Oke, Phil Callaway and Mark Buchanan. Marcia's second novel, A Tumbled Stone was recently short listed in the contemporary fiction category of The Word Awards. 

Abundant Rain, an ebook devotional for writers can be downloaded here. Visit Marcia’s website

 

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