Have you ever stopped to think about how much of what you call yours actually began as a gift?
I’m not talking only about money or possessions. Those are probably the first things our minds run to when someone starts talking about giving—and possibly the moment some of us begin quietly looking for the nearest exit. I’m thinking about all the other things God places in our hands: our time, abilities, knowledge, experiences, opportunities, homes, resources, and even the lessons we learned the hard way.
Jesus told His disciples, “freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). I’ve been thinking about those words because they remind me of something simple that’s easy to forget: what God gives us isn’t always intended to end with us.
He may allow us to learn something that we can later teach to someone else. He comforts us through difficult seasons, and that comfort enables us to recognize and minister to another hurting heart. He provides enough so that we can share with someone who doesn’t have enough. The home He gives us can become a place where someone is welcomed, fed, encouraged, or simply made to feel that they belong.
The more I think about it, the more I see something beautiful about the way God created us. We were created to be a village, so to speak.
God could have made each of us completely self-sufficient, with everything we would ever need tucked neatly inside ourselves. No borrowing a cup of sugar, no calling someone because the car is making a noise that definitely wasn’t there yesterday, no needing someone else’s wisdom, strength, experience, encouragement, or help. But He didn’t create us that way. He placed different things into different hands.
And here’s something we need to remember: needing what God has placed in someone else’s hands isn’t a flaw in us.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve picked up the idea that capable people handle everything themselves. If I need help, I must not be smart enough, strong enough, organized enough, prepared enough, or whatever particular “enough” happens to haunt me that day. So we struggle along carrying something that has become far too heavy, insisting, “I’ve got it,” while anyone with any measure of functioning eyesight can plainly see that we most certainly do not have it.
God never said we were supposed to have it all.
Paul wrote, “the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee” (1 Corinthians 12:21). The eye isn’t inadequate because it needs the hand, and the hand isn’t deficient because it needs the eye. Each was deliberately created with abilities the other doesn’t possess. Their need for one another isn’t evidence that something went wrong. It’s part of how beautifully God designed the body.
The same is true of us. We were created as social beings, made for relationship with God and with one another. In Eden, before sin had entered the world, God looked at Adam and said, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Think about that. Everything was still perfect, yet God Himself said there was something Adam should not do alone. Our need for other people isn’t merely the result of living in a broken world. Relationship and community were woven into God’s design from the beginning.
That changes the way I think about both giving and receiving.
Peter wrote, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10). God has placed something in my hands that someone else needs, and He has placed things in the hands of others that I need. Sometimes I will be the one giving, and sometimes I need enough humility to receive. Both belong in the village.
I love that Scripture tells us, “Bear ye one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2), because you can’t obey that verse entirely by yourself. For one person to help carry a burden, another person has to be willing to let someone come alongside and lift part of the weight. We tend to think there’s virtue only in being the burden-bearer, but there’s also humility in admitting when the burden has become too heavy to carry alone.
And what we have to give doesn’t have to be spectacular. One person has money to share while another has time. Someone can teach; someone else knows how to listen. One person can repair a broken faucet, while another can sit beside a broken heart. A lifetime of experience becomes wisdom for someone younger. A skill learned over decades can be passed along to a beginner. Even the comfort God gave us in one of our own dark valleys becomes something we can offer another person walking through theirs. Paul tells us that God “comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble” (2 Corinthians 1:4). Even comfort is meant to keep moving.
That’s one reason I love the little boy with the five barley loaves and two small fishes. What he had wasn’t enough to feed thousands of people. Not even close. But Jesus didn’t ask him to provide everything everyone needed. The boy simply made available what was in his hands, and Jesus did what only Jesus could do with it (John 6:9–13).
God doesn’t ask any one of us to possess everything another person will ever need. He never intended us to. He placed something in my hands, something else in yours, and something entirely different in someone else’s because His children were never designed to live as little islands unto themselves. We were created to give and receive, teach and learn, strengthen and be strengthened, encourage and be encouraged, help and—yes—sometimes allow ourselves to be helped.
“Freely ye have received, freely give.”
So there are two questions I’ve been turning over in my own heart: What has God placed in my hands that He never intended to stop with me? And am I willing to receive what He has placed in someone else’s hands for me?
I think that’s a beautiful part of what it means to be God’s family. We don’t each have to have everything. We have each other.
If this Fireside Chat warmed your spirit and sparked fresh resolve to live what you believe, fan that flame with Scripture—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). Pull a little closer to the Light, and carry it into the week ahead.
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