The gift you carry

She slips into the back row again, where she has decided she belongs now. After what happened, she has worked it out quietly: she is here to receive. To be cared for, to take a back seat, to let others carry things while she heals. She is not wrong, not for a season. But there is a sentence Peter writes that would change the whole way she sits, if she let it land. Each one has received a gift, he says, and the gift was given to be employed in serving one another, as good stewards of the grace of God in its many forms. He does not say the strong have gifts and the wounded only needs. He says each one. Which means there is something specific in her hands that the body is missing while she keeps it folded away. Paul says it too, plainly: we have gifts that differ according to the grace given us, so let us use them. The turn back toward a people is not finished while you remain only a consumer of the community's care. Somewhere in your hands is a gift the others need. And giving it, it turns out, is part of how you yourself are healed.

Coming back to a people after being wounded, you may quietly assume your only role now is to receive and recover, to sit in the back and let the strong ones serve. That season is real, and you should not rush it. But Peter presses gently further. You have received a gift, he says, and it was given not to hoard but to use in serving others. You are a steward of some particular form of God's grace, and here is the part that may surprise you: the body is missing exactly what you carry when you keep it folded away. You are not only a consumer of community, a mouth to be fed and a wound to be tended. You are a giver too, with something the others actually need. And there is a mercy hidden in this you might not expect. Giving the gift in your hands is part of how you come fully back to life. The healing is not only in what you receive. It is also in what, when you are ready, you begin again to give.