My very best Christmas as a kid was the
year I was given three significant presents – a box of Lego, a toy typewriter
with keys which actually worked, and a small fleet of plastic aircraft. I was
enormously grateful for my parents’ generosity.
And I think the extent of my pleasure
was related to my knowledge that I was secure in mum and dad’s love. I
understood that the gifts were given not as a substitute for love, or from a
sense of guilt, or in expectation of getting something from me in return but
simply because I was loved.
It seems to me that as in the whole of
life many of us have a tendency to mess up both in the giving and receiving of
gifts. Our motives are mixed.
We can find ourselves giving simply
because it’s expected of us, or to show off our wealth and taste, or to
pressurize the recipient to respond in a certain way, or as a poor alternative
to the thing we know we really should be doing.
As recipients we sometimes mess up too –
rejecting a gift because we don’t feel we deserve it, or because we want to
keep the giver at a distance, or because we feel we need to assert our
independence (although in some cases these last two might be appropriate
responses) Or we can accept the gift and instantly try to give back something
better.
Christmas reminds us that giving lies at
the heart of God’s nature. Christians believe that everything we are and have
is a moment-by-moment gift from a generous Father. The earth which is our home,
the seasons, food, prosperity, the abilities we have been given, our
relationships, courage and grace in adversity are all gifts. Each second of
time is a gift. Each breath, a gift. Our very existence, a gift.
These gifts can be explained in
scientific and psychological terms, but ultimately, we believe God is their
source. Christmas reminds us that in Jesus, God came among us. God’s greatest
gift is God’s presence with us. All God’s gifts are given in love, with no
strings attached, a divine love from which nothing can separate us.
I believe that it is as we recognise the
source of God’s gifts that we are enabled to give and to receive with purer
motives.
Someone who is sceptical about the
existence of God might say that the way to give from unmixed motives is to find
within us a sense of wholeness, an absence of neediness, a presence of love and
grace. With this I entirely agree, but I believe that this wholeness is a gift
from God.
Once I know I’m loved by God, I will have
a similar security to that which I knew as a child resting in my parents’ love.
I will no longer futilely seek through
the giving and receiving of gifts to address my inner emptiness but will be
free to give and to receive in joy.
Another childhood Christmas, I received
good presents, but later was told ‘You’d have had more if you’d been better
behaved.’ This upset me - the thought that my parents’ giving – and their love
too, perhaps – was constrained by my behaviour.
Sometimes we wonder if God’s like that.
‘I’ll give you good gifts if you
behave.’ The first thing to say is that God is not an irate, capricious Father.
God is love, and we all receive from God regardless of how deserving or
otherwise we are.
But in a deeper sense, a fuller
awareness of God’s love, a deeper appreciation of God’s goodness, a fuller flowing of the grace and love which gives our
lives meaning are gifts which I can only receive as, moment by moment, I align
myself with God, allowing God’s love to have its way with me.
I remember waking up one morning as a
young child. There was something on the chest of drawers beside the bedroom
door which hadn’t been there the night before when I went to sleep. It was all
blurry. I reached out for my glasses to see properly.
It was sweets - in three small boxes
joined by cardboard hinges which folded ingeniously together to form a little
house with bricks, a door, windows, garden flowers painted on the outside. A present
left by my Aunt Marion who had been child-sitting the evening before.
This was simply a wonderful surprise,
and I have never forgotten it.
Each Christmas there are people who see
clearly for the first time that at Bethlehem God was giving an unexpected gift.
The old story comes new, as a wonderful surprise. We never forget the moment we
open our eyes, and reach out, the moment the gift is given.
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