Wounds or Gifts

I have been reading a interesting book lately called "God Never Blinks" by Regina Brett.  In it she has some very interesting lessons, 50 of them actually!  Today's was rather interesting. 

She writes, "If we all threw our problems into a pile, we'd fight to get back our own, not because they are easier, but because they are ours.  Our lessons.  Our honors.  Our gifts."

I read that and thought "Who in their right mind would ever call problems a gift?!?!"  When you are in the middle of so many problems, and struggles it is hard to consider them anything even close to being a gift! When I think of problems, I relate it to the feelings of heartache, pain, fear, insecurity, brokenness, just to name a few.  Maybe your list is different.  Do those words sound like gifts to you?  

I remember when I was walking through the woods at camp several years ago, I came across a corpse of a bird that had got bit by an animal.  My heart sank.  I remember how fragile that little bird looked,and knew that it had suffered by it's wound, by it's brokenness.  As God's children, He knows us, each of us, by our wounds, by our brokenness.

Saint Augustine wrote, and I love this: "In my deepest wound I see Your glory, and it dazzles me."  To God, they are not wounds, but gifts.  I am perfectly imperfect to Him, even in the mess of life, in the problems and flaws that I have, in the wounds that I may suffer and get in this life.  And in all of my brokenness, I must give to God what He cannot recieve from anyone else:  the gift of me.