Each Their Own Gift
1 Corinthians 7:6-7 - Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
Psychologists have a name for one of the recurring mistakes the human mind makes. They call it affective forecasting: our attempt to predict how some future change will make us feel. Again and again, researchers have found that we tend to overestimate how intense the happiness will be and how long it will last. We’re certain the raise, the move, the new house, the different life will lift us to a permanently higher happiness. And then it arrives, and within a few months we’ve quietly adjusted, and we’re about as content (or as restless) as we were before. Researchers call this one hedonic adaptation: yesterday’s dream slowly becomes today’s normal. The grass really does look greener on the other side. We’re just very bad at guessing how it will feel once we’re standing on it.
Paul wouldn’t have been surprised. In our passage he’s writing to people restless in exactly this way — some single and aching to be married, some married and quietly longing for the freedom of the single — each convinced the other side of the fence is greener. And into that restlessness Paul says marriage is a gift from God. And singleness, he says, is also a gift from God. He uses the same word Scripture uses for the gifts of the Spirit. Your current state is not a sentence to endure, but a gift to receive.
Remember that every gift has a giver. You don’t choose a gift by comparing it to what someone else got. You receive it from the hand of the one who chose it for you. So, when we’re consumed with wanting the other person's life, when the single ache for marriage curdles into resentment, or the married heart goes wandering after singleness, we’re not really quarreling with our circumstances as much as we’re quarreling with the Giver. We’re telling God, however politely, that He handed us the wrong gift. And the psychologists have already told us that the greener grass is a mirage. Contentment is never going to be found by changing gifts, because it’s never about the gift in the first place.
See, here is what both the married and the single are really looking for, and neither marriage nor singleness can finally hand it over. We were made for a love that no spouse can supply and no freedom can replace. The love of the God who made us and gave Himself for us. Marriage is a gift that points toward it. Singleness is a gift that leans hard into it. But the thing itself, the deep and final belonging our hearts keep chasing, is found only in Christ. Get that, and your gift (whichever one it is) stops being a verdict on your worth and becomes what it always was: a good and specific grace, shaped for you, meant to draw you closer to Him.
Today: Take a few minutes and open a note of grab a pen. If you’re married, write down the specific, real gifts your marriage gives you that singleness could not: the particular person beside you, the shared history, the daily school of learning to love someone up close, etc. If you’re single, write down the specific, real gifts your singleness gives you that marriage could not: the freedom, the flexibility, the undivided time and attention you can pour into God and into others. Be concrete. Then read your list back slowly and thank God for each item by name as a gift He chose for you.
Prayer: “Thank You, Father, for all the good gifts You actually give me, and forgive me for eyeing the one You gave someone else. Teach my heart to rest in You, where the real thing has been all along. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
-PK