2008-01-17 A Sweet Story About Love and Sacrifice

If you would like to get back in touch with that wonderful feeling of giving to others who need help, The Gift is my prescription for you. Too many people feel like they cannot give very much unless they are rich like Bill Gates, talented like a singing star, or as famous as a princess. But we can all share our love, our understanding, a kind word, a prayer, and whatever we have. With God's help, that's often enough.

Richard Paul Evans does a remarkable job of showing how hungry the world is for love and appreciation in The Gift. There's emotional starvation all around us among those who have the riches of the world and covet those riches.

The book's main weakness is that the story isn't explicitly tied into Biblical Christian lessons except in the dust jacket's front flap and an opening quote from James 1:17, such as the ways we can pray for others to be healed and lay hands to assist that healing when we have faith enough. In fact, the book is suggests that healing is something that is physically harmful . . . contrary to Biblical evidence to the contrary. But if you enjoy the kind of amorphous spirituality that many authors like Mitch Albom favor, The Gift is a wonderful gift to readers.

Some will undoubtedly see parallels to A Christmas Carol in that the book involves considerable consideration of past, current, and future life for the book's narrator and there's a fragile child involved who will remind some of Tiny Tim. If that was the intent, I thought that the plot was developed in such a way that it made for interesting and unexpected twists and turns while employing a formula that we all know so well. The only weaknesses in the plot that some may be concerned about are that complications are unraveled a bit too easily, but that seems appropriate for a book about miracles.

I also enjoyed learning a little more about Tourette's syndrome. Like many, my perceptions seem to have been based on misperceptions. As the brother of a lupus survivor, I also was pleased to see a little awareness created for that discouraging disease.

May God bless you with His gifts!