What Is Your Gift to Jesus?
Some people say Christmas is not about the presents. But I tend to disagree.
Lots of us get caught up in the material presents, you know, the shiny kind—like the doll I wrapped in sparkly paper for my daughter this year. Or monetary presents (cash is always a big hit with my teen nieces and nephews). And of course let’s not forget those white elephant presents, which are really just a chance to re-gift the coconut lamp you got in last year’s gag exchange. Yes, those presents are one way to look at Christmas.
But I’m talking about another—the greatest gift of all time.
It’s the gift of Jesus himself.
“But when the right time came, God sent his Son into the world. A woman gave birth to him, and he came under the control of the laws given to Moses. God sent him to pay for the freedom of those who were controlled by these laws so that we would be adopted as his children” (Galatian 4:4–5, GW).
Christmas is about a baby who became a King. It’s about God’s redemptive plan since the beginning of time. It’s about our relationship to Him and His wonderfully absurd love for us, His undeserving children.
I am so grateful for this gift. Aren’t you?
So in our family, like yours, we may not make Christmas all about the material presents. But we do make the material presents all about Christmas. We teach our kids that gifts are an outward expression of our love for Jesus. And loving one another is a gift we give to Him.
It is His birthday, after all. He deserves the spotlight. And the presents. And the birthday cake—which we eat for breakfast on Christmas morning (highly recommend).
So to put all this gift-giving into perspective, my family began a tradition. Every year, in the midst of all the shopping and to-do lists and holiday season madness, we each give a special gift back to Jesus. On Christmas Eve we write that gift on a slip of paper and tuck it in our stockings. Then on Christmas morning, after the boxes are unwrapped and the living room floor is covered in a sea of crumpled paper, we reach inside our stockings and read our chosen gifts.
It’s the best moment of the day.
Last year, I gave Jesus my book—its success or failure, its reach and impact for the kingdom. Let His will be done.
My husband gave Him his career, which was undergoing a huge transition at the time.
Our five-year-old, bless her—she gave Jesus her thumb. As in, her die-hard thumb-sucking habit that we had been trying (and failing) to break for the past three years. I admit I was surprised and skeptical to see “my thumb” scrawled on her little square note, but wouldn’t you know it? This past year she quit sucking her thumb cold turkey and never looked back. Her gift to Jesus worked.
Praise God.
So while it’s easy this time of year to stress out over the commercialized American Christmas, let’s not make gifts the villain. Because in many ways, Christmas is about the gifts—the gift of Jesus to us, and the gift of ourselves back to Him.
What will you give Him this year?
Blessings,
Becky Kopitzke
Your family is coming nearer to that one gift which alone Jesus desires from you. If you observe the manner in which Jesus made of Himself the most perfect gift to you, you will soon identify the one gift from you which is above all else the desire of His Heart. It is the one gift to Him which alone has the capability to initiate in each of us our entry into the sainthood we so desire, even preceding our death. It can be observed that the sole offering of Jesus to us was simply that of Himself, made by Him without concern for Himself, without impediment and without reserve. His offering to us was not one of His coming in splendor, prosperity, victory, or success as we so often believe ours should be to Him. It was one of His being personally and consummately crushed. He came to us naked, destitute, unwanted and unrecognized except by His parents and a very few others. Above all, He allowed Himself an entry into our world identified primarily by one characteristic, that of an incalculable vulnerability. He was the unfathomable God and never knew the danger of vulnerability to any other being other than to the Father and Holy Spirit in whom He knew no danger. His was a vulnerability not just to the dangers of this world, but much more importantly for us, His was a vulnerability to the dangers and sufferings inherent in the desires of the Father who was determined at the cost of the life of His Son to have us each with Him for eternity. By His own determination, Jesus would be born in a stable, later to be scorned by His own people, then tortured and killed by those the Father sought to embrace. His determination to enter our world in this manner would cost Jesus a price which few of us even though we love Him dearly and embrace Him, would now be prepared to pay. It is not our suffering and death that God is after but our personal, consummate, and destitute vulnerability to Him, precisely the same as that offered to Him by His Son for our sake. Jesus suffered all just to impart to each one of us the renewed possibility of our being restored life in the embrace of the Father. If any of us should endeavor to take the time to make these observations of the manner in which our Savior surrendered Himself for us, a great deal about what God desires in our response to Him is revealed to us in the vulnerability of our Savior. His was the most perfect gift to us of all time and by our observation of the nature and manner of His gift, the manner in which we may approach God with our gift, one truly pleasing to Him, is revealed. It is one of our personal surrender, not of our stuff, our efforts, our hopes, or our expectations, but of our vulnerable and destitute selves, just as He made of Himself for each of us. It is this reciprocation in kind of ourselves to Him, our response to His offering made to us so long ago in His surrender to us, which will be found pleasing to Him into eternity.