This time of year people are preoccupied with giving and getting as gift exchanging is the highlight of both Hanukkah and Christmas traditions.
The downside to this manner of gift giving is that money is spent on material things which are usually only temporarily meaningful or impactful and over a period of time they lose their dazzle as the excitement dwindles with yet another hope for more gifts in the future so as to peak our arousal once again with a short promise towards happiness or fulfillment #scroogebahhumbug
Deep down in our hearts we know this to be true in that we have an emptiness or lack as we continue to fill our lives with things while longing for a perpetual gift that keeps on giving which supersedes all others gifts of which nothing else can compare. We were designed to yearn for this gift, yet unfortunately, many of us would rather look under a tree rather than to the One who was hung on a tree, Galatians 3:13. The deception is that such superficiality, no matter how much you try to encourage and convince yourself otherwise, will never lead to any lasting sense of contentment.
We can have a wish list and even if we get everything on our list it only leads to yet another wish list, so and so forth with a never-ending story of bucket lists.
Furthermore, the world offers different wrappers of attraction with various toys and gadgets to keep us hoping and dreaming for more but these longings are usually short lived as no matter how many times you change the wrapping paper it’s still the same old thing refashioned.
So what would the ultimate gift look like so we could recognize it? One quality that ranks high is the Cost of the gift which signifies our value in relationship to the giver. This time of year we often think of the birth of the Messiah and the gifts of the Magi and yet what the Messiah had to offer was much more than the riches and desires of this world as One who was born to die as a priceless offering on our behalf, 1 Peter 1:18-19.
Another quality is How the gift was given. Was it obligatory in nature as a reciprocal response? Is it something expected almost demanded based on the nature of the occasion? Was it given sincerely as a gesture of love and appreciation or was it really based on how they associate with the other person as an extension of themselves? Sometimes we may not always know the psychology of giving and though it might even be our love language it does not necessarily imply that real love was the motivation for such giving. One thing we can be sure about is that God the Giver gave to us the Savior of the World unconditionally, as essentially we were His enemies by nature and could not give anything of equal value in return for God’s sacrificial love, which is a shortcoming to all religions with their naughty and nice list about earning or giving something back as to merit their god’s favor before acceptance. It may all appear as finely wrapped in devotion and honor but this behavior is more questionably a debt towards a payment of which they owe. However, God’s gift is unmerited as there is nothing we have done or can do to earn it and so it becomes a matter of freely Receiving the gift which is much more than what we could ever expect from any human counterpart or religious system, even at their very best, Romans 5:6-10, Ephesians 2:8-9, John 1:12.
Speaking of motivation, the Initiative of the gift is relational and reconciliatory which again is beyond human consideration as usually the offender offers the offendee a peace-offering not vice versa.
Another characteristic of this gift is that it is completely Satisfactory to the soul apart from any rivals as not only justifying us before God as forgiving our trespasses but by also giving us the full package of redemption as including the Comforter or Holy Spirit who as the divine helpmate and change agent renews us through His regenerating power bearing witness that we are the children of God, Romans 3:20-26, 5:1-2, Galatians 2:16, John 14:16-17, Galatians 5:16-26, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Titus 3:3-7, Romans 8:1-18.
Finally, the gift is immediate and Timeless which can not be destroyed, lost, or decay, as it is Eternal Life, Romans 8:28-39, John 3:16. Which is more than anything that can be offered to us in the temporal realm including religions that may profess enlightenment with the hopes of a recycle theory of rebirth or a purgatorial realm that through the perfecting of imperfect humans over time will somehow attain ultimate reality as not so ultimate.
Additionally, God is not trying to conceal His gift as a mystery in which we have to discover like some secretive Christmas catalog order form or by guessing as making small openings in the package or by shaking it in hopes of figuring out what God has given us, rather He has openly revealed to us as respectfully unwrapping His Son from the swaddling clothes to present the greatest gift that has or could ever be given, Isaiah 9:6-7.
Though Jesus Christ is offered as to bring peace on earth and good will toward men He is not always received as such according to these various responses.
1) Some will treat Him like a gag gift or as a white elephant used as the brunt of jokes when referring to receiving such a ridiculous excuse of a gift.
2) Others with amazement and surprise emotionally receive Him with great joy then once realizing their responsibility in receiving, reject Him, as fearful of any repercussions towards commitment as not really wanting Him.
3) Then there are those who will receive Him only as a new faddish seasonal gift in their life and then frivolously set Him aside to pursue other more seemingly profitable gifts.
4) Lastly, there are those who understand Him as ‘the Pearl of great price’ as seeing the true value of which others have refused and embrace Him with all their heart as the only gift worth opening as forgetting all other gifts.
Perhaps you too may reject Jesus as a maximally great gift of a person in imagining a God who would do all of what I have previously mentioned without receiving any relational ties. Yet it is our experience as recognizing the importance of social factors in our lives and therefore it would seem elementary to imagine the superiority of a personal God as more excellent than an absentee Father who would have left you an inheritance without the present of His presence. Will you receive His gift of perfect love?
James 1:17
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, nor turning shadow.
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