What Are You Giving Jesus for Christmas?
By Dennis Peacocke
As the holiday season engulfs us, most receive it with major excitement and a bit of nostalgia. The holidays not only allow time with family and friends, but they also allow us to look back to holidays gone by and remembrances of people, places, and times which helped mark the passing of our lives. The season is indeed a reminder of God‘s intervention in human history through Christ and an opportunity to invest in loved ones, creating memories we hope to store up for future days.
Beyond the relational musings, but totally tied to them, is the issue of the giving of gifts. While this may stretch us sometimes in terms of what is “best” to give and within our financial reach, we love the moments of surprise and delight that gifts bring, especially to children. Christmas is ultimately all about gifts and tangible expressions of love, beginning with God‘s gifts to us in Christ, but also a multitude of other ways as a result. Out of God‘s gifts comes the possibility of a life well lived, beckoning to us all in the midst of speed, weakness, evil, and stupidity. Christmas affords us these looks at our lives if we dare seek them out.
Without question, our family and friends don’t want our material gifts for one another as much as they simply want us. That gift is much harder to give, try as we may. Indeed, the ability to consistently “be there” for people is neither easy nor cheap. It is constantly challenged by a host of difficulties and requires both a functioning sender and a functioning receiver to make the connection. This reality only makes the effort riskier—to overcome self and attempt to dive deeply into another, only to be misunderstood or never to connect. The effort can bring a kind of discouragement unlike any other. But for those who see the value, there is no other option than renewed effort.
So let’s bring it back to the question: What are you and I giving Jesus this year? If His incarnation as a helpless little baby means anything, it means “being there” in a fallen world where His coming and going would be ridiculed by some, lost on many, and beyond the full grasp of all. Yet, He came and gave it all. So, what might we give to Him? I say that our best gift to Him and everyone else is an ongoing commitment to follow His example and be there through and beyond the obstacles and failures and in cherishing the successes. May it be so in your relationships with others and in your relationship with Him.