The Gift

continued

Seeing the toy car, Tomu's face reflected the kind of awe you see in paintings of saints confronted with the celestial vision. When he still didn't reach for the car, Donn lifted it out and handed it to him. The child held it on his two outstretched hands, trembling a little at being in contact with anything so glorious.

Then, solemnly, he handed it back once more.

I began to wonder whether this little boy had ever had a store-bought toy. "Kapa! Kapa!" Donn kept telling him, Swahili for "gift." Tomu, however, spoke only the local Luganda language. Placing the toy car again in his hands, pointing to him, then to the car, then back to him, Donn at last communicated that he was to keep this object. That it was his. That he could take it away with him.

And then! Then I saw on Tomu's face a joy like the sunrise. Incredulous joy, celebratory joy, an open-mouthed smile that kept coming and wouldn't stop.

I recognized that joy. It was the joy I'd felt when slowly, stumblingly, uncomprehendingly, I grasped that inside the gorgeous packaging of St. Mark's - the Gothic architecture, the splendid organ, the stately English of the Prayer Book - was the Gift itself. Gods love, infinite, eternal. And that this love was mine.

No tiny part of it had I earned. I doubt if Tomu's family, in that almost cashless society, could have gone toy shopping. Tomu's gift, like mine, had to be purchased by someone able to pay the price. My gift too had been paid for and held out to me. God's problem, as Donn's with Tomu, is to persuade the recipient that what is too good to be true is true, nonetheless.