A Gift in the Making--December 3, 2021

A Gift in the Making--December 3, 2021

When we were kids, our first impulse for Christmas presents to give to our parents or siblings was to make them something. Before we were ingrained in our culture's ritual of thoughtlessly buying trinkets nobody needed or really wanted, and before we were catechized into believing that the way you show love to someone is measurable by the amount of money you have spent on them, we had an instinct to create... and then to give our creations away to be enjoyed and treasured.

I can see it brewing already inside my kids each December, as they are drawn to spend money (all given by their parents, of course) on cheap merchandise in their school Santa Shop (or whatever names they are using) that takes no thought at all, nor any sense of the giver's self, much less the recipient.  Like any parent or grandparent on earth will tell you, they would infinitely rather have something a child has drawn, made, written, or created with their own minds and hands than another plastic keychain, pocket flashlight, or scented eraser.  And yet, here we all are, training our kids to measure a gift by its retail price rather than how much of the giver's own self has gone into the giving, or how much understanding of the receiver has been lovingly conveyed in the choice of gift.

So what if right now, for this coming Christmas, you and I made the choice to be different--to resist a little bit, to rebel against the impulses of valuing gifts by their sticker prices, and what if we chose at least one gift we will give this year to be something we make?  What if we redeem the practice of giving gifts at Christmas from being just a crass exchange of consumable goods to goose the GDP and reclaim it as a way of giving something of our selves to one another as a reminder of the way God's own self was given to us in Jesus?  What if we didn't care about that little voice at the back of our mind that says, "Making presents?! That's kid stuff!" and instead told that voice that the reason children can give gifts they have made is that they are unafraid of putting themselves into their gifts, and they are unafraid of showing genuine love?  What if we made the plans now for creating something as a gift for someone else this year?

To be clear, the "what" doesn't exactly matter.  If you're a crafty or artisan-type of person, sure, go ahead and build something.  If you're a writer, write something.  If you have even the slightest streak of the artist in you, create a work of art as a gift.  If what you can give is time and honest listening, make a gift out of a promise to buy a friend lunch and have good conversation.  But let it be some way of genuinely offering some piece of yourself to another person, and showing the other person that you know and understand what they like, care about, or have interest in through what you make for them.

And as you think out your gift idea, pay attention to what happens inside your own soul.  Pay attention to how you can feel simultaneously joyful and vulnerable to share something of yourself, something that cannot be reduced to a price tag or measured against other brands or models.   Pay attention to how it feels to put the time in as you measure and cut, as you paint and draw, as you write or plan or prepare.  And then, in the midst of all of that, consider that this is really what the coming of Jesus is all about.  Jesus is what it looks like when God gives a gift of God's own self.

Let's be honest: sometimes we get so caught up in the tradition of gift-giving that we forget the connection between God's gift of Jesus and our gifts to one another.  We forget that the reason we give to one another is as an echo of God's gift to us in Christ--a gift that quite literally conveys something of the Giver.  So as we experience the joy, the love, the thought-process, the energy, and even the feeling of sharing a piece of our own soul while we make something for someone else this Christmas, maybe we will get a glimpse of what Christmas is like from God's perspective.  When you and I pay attention to how it feels to convey something of ourselves into the gifts we create to give to others, we'll find a deeper understanding for how God has come to us in the gift of Jesus, our Emmanuel--God-with-us.

So fight against the urge to reduce every gift to a monetary cash value, and let this be a year that your gifts to others became a place of spiritual learning for you as well, so that we might come to know the love of God who has come to us in the humanity of Jesus.

Discover again what children have not yet been made to forget: there is something utterly good about making a gift yourself, for the way it lets you share your own self with others.

Lord God, let us come to know the way you give yourself away as we give to others in this season.