All of us are gift

If I am a gift, then all of us on this planet are also gift. Gifts of God given to bless and to enrich the world. True, some choose not to be what they were created to be. Some choose to only take or worse, to wreak evil. This is not how things were intended to be.

But in God's economy, everything is redeemed, and so the Scriptures say (Romans 8:28): "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." It also says (Isaiah 59:19): "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him." And again (2 Samuel 22:29): "You are my lamp, O LORD; the LORD turns my darkness into light."

What does that mean? It means that although evil happens to those who belong to God, God turns it all to good. I am an abuse survivor. Today, as I look at myself, I rather like who I am. One day, as I was considering the kind of person I had become despite everything, I realized that I hadn't become despite everything, but because of everything. I would not be who I am today apart from the abuse. Sure, I had to overcome some major dysfunction that resulted. But I truly believe that my heart of compassion for the broken, my sense of justice and fairness, and my ability to empathize all stem directly from the "evil" of my past.

Laurence Gonzales has written a powerful book called Deep Survival. In it, he tells stories of people who have endured horrendous survival situations from going down in a plane in the Andes to being cast adrift in the ocean for weeks. He looks at the qualities of the survivors vs. the people who didn't make it. One of the things he notes is that, eventually, survivors, while they are still in the midst of their ordeal, start to see beauty in their situation. It's no longer nothing but unremitting evil for them. Some are even enraptured with what they begin to notice all around them.

Which is a characteristic of a contemplative. A contemplative is never satisfied with the superficial. They wonder what lies deeper and what lies beyond. A Christian contemplative wonders how God is revealing Himself in the good and the evil, the ordinary and the extraordinary of their lives. They make time to reflect and to consider so they don't miss the beauty, the divine, and the deep wisdom that is all around us in all the circumstances of our life, no matter who we are. And eventually we come to the place where we know that God has told us the truth. In all things, He really is turning the tables on evil and working for our good.