“gift of” vs. “gift from”

@mshades - On the contrary, you were quite right to use "between". It's nonsense that "between" can only be used for two, and anyone who gives you a smacking for it has only learnt half a rule. When we see things as a group, yes we use "among", but when we see them as individuals, we tend to use "between". This is from the OED:

"It [between] is still the only word available to express the relation of a thing to many surrounding things severally and individually, among expressing a relation to them collectively and vaguely"

"The Republic of Poland, a country in Central Europe, lies between Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, and the Baltic Sea, Lithuania and Russia to the north." - UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies

In answer to the question, I agree with mshades, and this dictionary entry supports that:

http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/gift

But there seems to be one exception - when God or gods are involved. A random fifty examples at the British National Corpus almost exclusively used "from", except for this one:

"Where Wesley stressed faith as a gift of God, Locke stressed reason as a gift of God"

http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=a+gift+of&mysubmit=Go

According to this Google Ngram graph, "gift of God" has historically been more common than "gift from God", although it suggests that things are changing:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gift+of+God%2Cgift+from+God&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

"gift of the gods" vs "gift from the gods" shows a similar story, but here the "from" version has now overtaken the "of" version:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gift+of+the+gods%2Cgift+from+the+gods&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

Incidentally, it looks as though the preference for "from" rather than "of" is fairly recent, on both sides of the Atlantic:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=was+a+gift+from%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cwas+a+gift+of%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cwas+a+gift+from%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cwas+a+gift+of%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

Between you, me, and the gatepost, I agree with mshades and WW.

gift from

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/gift

I think they mean the same thing, except the meaning "gift from" is much more clearer. "Gift of" could be either, the giver who gives or the gift belongs to someone.

I have written an essay about a painting, William Trost Richards’s A Rocky Coast. I sought the assistance of this website to verify the use of my preposition following the word “gift.” Here is my sentence: And don’t miss the almost imperceptible pink, all across the water’s surface, a gift of the setting sun.
I had to smile, because I now see the meaning to be more like a charitable contribution from the sun, rather than something simply given “from” the sun. So, thank you for all the interplay of responses, which have helped me with this sentence in prose.