Who got the best gift?

Today, I’m studying the gospel take on giftedness as antidote to the brutal competition and comparison that women can inflict on one another. I came upon this devotional by Eugene Peterson in Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator, and it occurred to me it might be very relevant to some of us the day after Christmas. Who got the best gift? WE ALL DID!

“The Corinthian church was typical of the way people act when they’re together. They were all jockeying for preeminence, asserting themselves and at the same time putting others down. Each one claiming that what he had was better than what the others had.

The church, Paul argued, is the place where we find ourselves accepted for who we are, free to be what God has created us to be. We’re not competitors; we’re a community. All the distinctions we’re used to making are dissolved here. Each of us is accepted in terms of our own unique contribution to the glory of God.

Paul used the image of the body to explain our relation to one another. We’re all parts of the body of Christ. And that means there’s simply nothing in the body that is trivial or unimportant.” Eugene Peterson, Conversations

A REMINDER TO WOMEN IN THE PENSACOLA AREA: THE SARAH SISTERHOOD/MORE THAN A STUDY BEGINS JANUARY 12. MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND BE THINKING OF WHOM YOU WILL INVITE.