Nothing To Give

I wonder what it is for you that sort of throws the switch on the Christmas season?

Maybe it’s Nov. 1^st when all the Halloween candy goes on clearance and all the Christmas candy and décor take the main stage at Wal-Mart or Target?

Maybe it’s the nostalgia of Christmas carols…when all the radio stations switch and play nothing but Bing Crosby and Manheim Steamroller and that Chipmunks Christmas song.

Maybe it’s a favorite Christmas movie that becomes a TV marathon during the month of December.

Maybe it’s a family tradition that rings in the season…a Christmas tree hunt or an advent calendar is hung up.

Maybe it’s when the house is filled with the sweet smell of fresh baked sugar cookies or cinnamon apple cider.

Or maybe the thing that throws the switch on the Christmas season for you is Christmas shopping; the hustle and bustle and jockeying for position, the couponing and doorbusting and so on.  All to find that special gift to give that special person. 

But the thing about this that struck me this Christmas is that, ultimately we really don’t have anything to give unless we first receive.

My kids are 9, 8, and 6…so they don’t have a ton of money to speak of outside of some gift money they save from their birthdays.  So when Christmas time rolls around, they really don’t have anything to give…unless they first get some money from Mom and Dad.

So my wife and I – and maybe you do this same thing with your kids; I’m pretty sure my parents did it with my siblings and me – we give them each some money and we take them out to buy gifts for us.

And it occurs to me.  The thing about this that really means a ton to me is not necessarily the item they purchase for me, because after all, I could, if I wanted to, skip the middleman and go buy the item myself.  You know what I mean? 

Rather the thing that really means a ton to me is the heart behind the item…the demonstration of love from my kids.  Right?  Doesn’t that become the real gift?  It’s not the item but the gift of “You are my Daddy and I am your child, and I love you; so much that I thought of this for you.”

So there I stand on Christmas morning with a gift in my hand, really no richer than I was before I opened it, yet somehow the richest man in the world…

But not without my kids having received from me a gift first.

Well, isn’t that just what God has done?  Isn’t that the heart of this very season we celebrate as Christmas?

There is a passage in the Bible, in Galatians 4:4-6.  I know, I know, not really your go-to Christmas passage.  But the passage starts:

“But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law…

That’s Christmas right there.  That’s the nativity scene that we watch in Christmas programs and see displayed in lit plastic on front yards across the country.

“…so that Jesus might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law…”

Now by law, what the passage is talking about is the law of sin, or this burden of sin that we bear.  We all bear it.  No one gets out of it.  It’s our born nature.  You and I both.

A quick peek at the newspaper reminds us of this, if not a quick peek through the window of our homes…the hurt and brokenness and pain that life seems to generate…it’s just never been more present in the world; in our lives.  This is no secret.

But on the back side of this law of sin we have this amazing news:  That God’s Son, Jesus, was born into this world to redeem us; to rescue us or liberate us from our born nature of sin.

That’s rad.  But the passage continues:

“…Thus when we receive God’s gift of Jesus we are set free to experience our rightful heritage.”

That heritage is being a child of God.  Don’t you love it!

Then this: 

“You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as God’s own children because God sent the Sprit of Jesus Christ into our lives so that we might call Him ‘Papa! or Father!’”

And that’s the mark of what we celebrate at Christmas time.

In a sense, I’m just like my kids.  I am searching for something to give to God and really I don’t have anything to give.  I have no money, no resources; nothing but sin, which God is less than thrilled with, right?

I have nothing to give…unless I first receive.

See, by God sending His Son Jesus Christ at Christmas time to redeem me by dying for my sin and being raised to new life – and then granting me enough faith to know the story is true – by God giving all that to me, I am now in a place to give back to God…and not with an item so much as with a real gift; something like:

You are my Daddy and I am your child…and I love you.

I tell you all this to re-center us on what Christmas really is.  We love the décor and the nostalgia and music and movies and time together with friends and family…and the gift giving & receiving; absolutely.  Who of us would trade this stuff away?

But it is important that we remember, especially in the flurry of gift giving, that ultimately we really don’t have anything to give unless we first receive.