Apostles co-create with God

When I ponder the spiritual gifts listed in Ephesians, APEST, I think about function. What does an apostle do? How is it different/similar to the evangelist’s gift? Rarely do I consider the experience of using the gift with God.

Jessie Cruickshank offers a beautiful homily on the parental feeling inherent in giving birth to God’s kingdom in the world. She meditates on Mary's experience as the God-bearer, the prophets of the LORD, and the artisans of the Tabernacle. Using language familiar to the apostle Paul, she describes the joyful burden, the happy sacrifice of giving birth to a new community. Likening the experience to birthing and raising a child, she magnifies the relationship of the creator to their work and confronts the false distance that some serial creators keep from their creations to avoid pain.