Christmas: Evolving From Gifts To Gift Givers

​My oldest child will turn 18 later this week. I remember the feeling I had the first time my eyes met Elliott's. One way to describe it is I felt like I was staring at the greatest gift ever given to man.

A gift I felt completely unworthy to receive.

Last night, we were watching a basketball game. I looked at Elliott and said, quite out of the blue to him I'm sure, "this is your last weekend of being a kid."

He seemed unpressured by that pronouncement.

I certainly wasn't trying to pressure him. In reality, my grandest hope for this soon to be adult of mine is that he will go give himself as a gift to the world that will make the world feel like I have felt having received him as a gift from God nearly eighteen years ago.

I wonder if this is how Mary felt that first Christmas Day holding our baby Jesus - like she was holding the greatest gift ever given to humanity. And I wonder if Mary could have had any idea the kind of gift-giver her little baby was going to become.

The giver of healing.

The giver of compassion.

The giver of food for the hungry and drink for the thirsty.

The giver of inclusion and acceptance of all.

The giver of teaching and wisdom.

The giver of prayer and intercession and hope.

The giver of peace.

And ultimately, the giver of his own life: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

It is the ideal lifecycle I believe, to come into the world as gifts and evolve into gift-givers.

It was certainly the lifecycle of Jesus who came into the world as a gift in a manger and brutally left it as the ultimate gift-giver on a cross.

And as such, it is the lifecycle of our Christian faith, that we receive this gift of the Holy Spirit living within us, a spirit that then fuels our forever desire to be gifts to all people and to all ends of the earth.

It is certainly the lifecycle of our journey to Bethlehem. We travel there to receive the most beautiful gift anyone can receive. We travel there to receive Christmas. But Christmas is only the beginning of the story. The rest of the story is written in what we do with Christmas.

I don't think Jesus would have a problem with us wrapping and giving material gifts to one another this year to celebrate his birth. That is, just so long as those gifts are a reminder that Christmas came to challenge us to evolve from gifts to gift-givers. And to remind us, that in the end, we will be remembered for the gifts we gave.

Gifts, that more often than not, never had to be wrapped.