The Parable of the Doll

My eyes shot open with the thrill of anticipation. For months I had asked--no, I had demanded--that I be given the doll I had seen advertised on TV. I had hardly slept all night, and now at last it was Christmas morning. I ran into the living room, and there, beneath the tree, was the doll of my dreams. There was only one problem...my sister's name was on it.

I sat there in stunned silence staring at my sister and her doll until my mother came and took me to the gift that had my name on it. It was not what I had chosen or wanted. My disappointment was obvious. Mother gently explained that she had chosen this particular gift for me. She told me that she had gone to the store to buy what I had asked for, but when she saw this doll she knew it should be mine.

That Christmas I had the flu. I took Susie to my sick bed and somewhere during the day I found that my mother had made the right choice for me. I don't remember what happened to my sister's doll, but Susie became a symbol of my childhood. I spoke of her so often to my children that one Christmas morning to my utter delight there was a doll identical to Susie sitting under the tree! My daughter Elisabeth had searched for years until she found a replace for the doll of my childhood.

I have found that there are times when my Heavenly Father has chosen gifts for me, gifts that I would have never chosen for myself. These are things in my life that have seemed at first more like curses than blessings or gifts. Surely this was true of the man who was blind from birth who heard the question asked,"Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" But Jesus responded by saying,"This came about so that God's works might be displayed in him." And so the man's blindness was not a curse but instead a great gift.

Today my new Susie sits in an antique chair with her arms open wide. She is not only is a symbol of my childhood, she is a parable to me of a deeper truth. Sometimes an unwanted gift, chosen by a loving parent, represents a great blessing. Sometimes when the thing we thought was a curse comes in contact with Jesus we find that it is the place in which we see God's works displayed in our lives.