As my family grows, I get fresh insight into how beautifully we are designed for life in community. My nine children stretch in age from 14 to 34 years old. When we’re all together for a summer vacation, each of us falls into certain roles according to our gifts. Need to navigate a new place? Give the map to Nick and follow him. Want to bring beauty to the table before we sit for a meal? Invite Kristin to collaborate with Katie and we’re guaranteed a lovely tablescape. Need a diplomat to navigate an argument and smooth out hurt feelings? Lexi does that beautifully. Too many competing opinions and agendas, and we really need a plan that pulls it together? My husband is the family executive. What’s so interesting to me is that not all of these people recognize themselves in the roles they’re called to play. Often, it is those of us closest to each individual who see their gifts and urge them to share with our little community.
I wonder how often we unknowingly disqualify ourselves from using our gifts for the greater good? We know what we like to do, and we recognize our gifts in the things we’re good at doing, but with self-discernment can also come self-limitation. We lack confidence or we hesitate to step into a challenge. In an atmosphere of trust and unconditional love, we aren’t likely to be as afraid. Maintaining that love covers a multitude of sins, to be sure, and it also more than compensates for the inevitable missteps along the way as gifts are developed.
In an environment that is kind and open, each member — from the youngest to the wisest, but still learning — is encouraged to grow into what God intended. And each gift serves the community in a unique and irreplaceable way. When a family or a faith community recognizes a gift and calls a member into the fullest service of that gift, something remarkable happens. Affirmation and encouragement on the part of one’s friends nourish the gift.
The practice of coming alongside someone you love and helping them to see how God is calling is one that suits families well, but it’s also a practice for other communities of faith. Beauty flourishes when we see how God desires to work within someone and we help her recognize the gifts he graciously gives. The truest expression of this kind of community support comes when each member helps the other to prepare and practice their unique gifts. Parents do this with particular care, of course, as they educate their children. The practice is not limited to an older generation preparing a younger; my children teach me daily about my gifts and theirs. Encouragement of gifts expands to include friends who affirm and support, and it grows into an incredibly beautiful expression within a marriage.
When we choose vulnerability over self-protection, encouragement over disparagement, and love over fear, we build a stronger community through individual gifts. Constant love — the continuous laying down of one life for another — brings the strength of God to relationships. Stable, committed community offers its members the room and the grace to grow into the truest expression of the gifts God gives. Nurturing communities don’t just happen — whether in a marriage, a friendship or a childhood. They are intentionally decided. In every moment over the lifetime of a relationship, we can choose to love and serve one another, mutually encouraging one another in the expression of gifts. Together we pray, we grow and we learn the grace of God in the way we love one another.
As God has entered into a covenant with us, so do we honor one another. Every marriage, every family, every community has its own unique story of the way it brings to life God’s mercy and his glory in their midst. Every gathering of the faithful will offer to one another and to the world the individual gifts of each member that they’ve nurtured together.
Do you see the gifts in the people close to you? How can you help bring them to the world?
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
