Choosing a Better Gift

“Christmas means ‘giving,’ and the gift without the giver is bare. 

Give of yourselves; give of your substance; give of your heart and mind.”  Gordon B. Hinckley

 Recently, I was surprised to learn that not only does Elon Musk own Tesla and now Twitter but he even sells perfume…and not just any perfume. Elon Musk sells “Burnt Hair Perfume"; it’s advertised as the “essence of repugnant desire.” No, this is not a gag gift or a White Elephant Gift. The perfume is meant to smell like your head is on fire. But if you want to buy a bottle for your one true love, you’ll have to wait until next Christmas. 30,000 bottles, which sold at $100 a pop, were completely sold out. 

  Are you like me? Do you struggle each Christmas to find just the right gifts for those you love? Did you venture out on Black Friday to find this year’s hot gift, hoping that it was still in stock?

  There are some Christmas gifts that everyone needs and you don’t have to shop for them. They’re so basic and so longed for, yet too often overlooked. Here are some “hot gifts” that are always needed.

  Give grace. Christmas tends to bring out our inner Hallmark, yet it’s a sin-filled world where lots of bad stuff happens. To add to that many of us come from broken families or there’s fragmentation in our current one. For many, it’s “The Nightmare before Christmas.” Our parents may be divorced or not getting along. Our children, even adult ones, are divided. Perhaps a loved one died this past year leaving an empty space at the table. Many have been invited to a dysfunctional family situation to “celebrate.” All the gifts in the world won’t put a nice bow on that trainwreck.  

  Yet, the real Christmas is not about what is happening but because of what has happened. That first Christmas was far from perfect. Humanly speaking, it was a disaster. Mary and Joseph are away from home because the government wanted more tax money. Then, Bethlehem was more crowded than a mall on Christmas Eve. The only place where Mary could give birth to her baby was a dirty stable.

  But that happening changed everything. It’s why the angels announced to some poor shepherds that there was “peace on earth” because the Prince of Peace had come. Life on this messed up world would never be the same.

  This year instead of being disappointed because your family looks more like the McCallisters’ from Home Alone fame than Tiny Tim’s, or because of irreconcilable differences the family won’t be together, or because of the economy there are fewer gifts and a smaller meal, remember that’s not what Christmas is about. It’s not about what’s happening. Christmas is about what happened 2,000 years ago when the promised Messiah came.

  Give love. We, humans, tend to give what we’re given. If we don’t receive love, we often don’t give it. We treat others the way we’re treated.

  Yet, if you’ve experienced God’s love, if you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior, then you’ve personally experienced undeserved love. As the hymn goes: “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how He could love me, a sinner condemned, unclean.” Every believer who looks in the mirror has that same question – How could Jesus love me? We know ourselves. We know how unworthy we are. We know how unworthy we are of His sacrifice on the cross for us. But still He came and still He went to the cross. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” As God has given love to us, we are to give love to others…no strings attached.

  We are to love our families. It doesn’t matter if you had the worst father and mother of all time – you’re still to love them. Even if your spouse mistreats you, you’re still to love them. That sibling who’s been cruel and mean to you as long as you can remember…yes, you’re to love them, too.  

  We are to love our spiritual family. It doesn’t matter if someone is Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Non-Denominational, or Catholic – if they’ve committed their lives to Christ and are trusting Him as the only way to heaven (John 14:6), they’re brothers and sisters in Christ. We are to love them. There is no place for a “holy war” in God’s family. It doesn’t matter if they’re from a different ethnic group or of a different political persuasion. Economically, we may have nothing in common. None of that matters because it’s level ground at the foot of the cross.

  In what was known as the “love feast” in the church at Corinth, there were those from every tribe and nation. Slaves and masters, Jews and Gentiles ate side by side. The Bible says that if we say we love God and don’t love our brother or sister, then we’re liars (1 John 4:20-21). You simply can’t love God and not love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

  We are to love our enemies. We are only asked to do what our Lord did when He prayed, “Father forgive them” from the cross. Over a dozen times the Bible commands us to love our enemies.

  The first fruit of the Spirit is love. God intends for us to be channels of His love even to those who hate us. He never promised it would be easy. He did though promise us grace to obey His command and love them.

  In his book How Small a Whisper, Roger Carswell relates an amazing story of a Christian family's response to tragedy. In May 1987, 39 American seamen were killed in the Persian Gulf when an Iraqi pilot hit their ship, the USS Stark, with a missile. Newspapers carried a picture of the son of one of these seamen, a shy five-year-old boy, John Kiser. He was standing with his hand on his heart as his father's coffin was loaded onto a plane to take him back to the U.S.A.

  His mother said, “I don't have to mourn or wear black, because I know my husband is in heaven. I am happy, because I know he is better off."

  Later on, she and young John sent a letter and an Arabic New Testament to the pilot of the Iraqi plane, addressed to: “The man who attacked the Stark, Dad's ship, in the hope that it will show that even the son and the wife do not hold any grudge and are at the same time praying for the one who took the life of our father.” How is such love possible? It’s from the God of love, the One who sent His Son as the first Christmas gift.

  I wouldn’t buy Burnt Hair perfume, yet we can give gifts that everyone wants and needs. Let’s give grace and let’s give love! It’s because of what has happened that God has called us to do for others what He did for us. 

Can we help you spiritually? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address. 

Missing Christmas

“Jesus is not to us as Christmas is to the world, here today and gone tomorrow.”  Rick Mylander

  During the great depression a family was unable to afford much of anything but the bare necessities. One day news came that a circus was coming to town. Tickets cost one dollar. The little boy came running home excited and eager to get the money from his Dad. The father regretfully told his boy that he couldn’t afford to give him with that much money, but if he went out and worked on odd jobs, he might make enough to be able purchase a ticket on his own. The Dad promised to match what the boy could earn. So this little guy worked feverishly and, just a few days before the circus came to town, he found that he had just enough money, including his Dad’s contribution. He took his money and ran off to town to buy his circus ticket. On the day the circus came to town, he grabbed his ticket and rushed to the main street, where he stood on the curb as the circus parade went by. He was thrilled to watch the clowns, elephants, and all of the performers. A clown came dancing over to him and the boy put his ticket in the clown’s hand. He eagerly watched as the rest of the parade went by.   

  After the parade, the boy rushed home and told his father that he’d been to the circus and how much fun it was. The father, very surprised that his son was home already, asked him to describe the circus. The boy told of the parade that went down the main street and then of giving his ticket to the clown. The father sadly took his son in his arms and said, “Son, you didn’t see the circus; all you saw was the parade.”

  That boy reminds me of many people at Christmas time. They get so caught up with the carols, trees, lights, and gifts. They think that they’re experiencing what Christmas is all about, but really, all they’re doing is seeing the parade and missing the main event, the real Christmas story.

  Most of us would agree that Hollywood and contemporary music have made Christmas something syrupy and sappy. In the Church, authors, philosophers, poets, preachers and composers through the centuries have searched in vain for words that adequately capture the wonder, mystery, beauty, and power of Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us. And too often, we’re as guilty of missing the real Christmas story as a secular world.

  The miracle and meaning of the incarnation is hard for us to comprehend with our finite minds. It can be so difficult to grasp that we give up and start to view Christmas in ways that leave us impoverished and unimpressed with the real story. Often our songs and reflections about Christmas can fail to leave people gasping in amazement or humbled in awe that God would come to dwell among us.

  Sometimes we turn Christmas into a Hallmark special. Sentimentalism is focusing on the sights, sounds, and smells of Christmas that give us good feelings. Dazzling decorations, fresh baked cookies, poinsettias, family get-togethers, gift shopping, twinkling lights, Christmas carols, cards from friends, tree-cutting expeditions, wrapping presents. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. They’re all expressions of common grace, for which we can joyfully thank God. And traditions are important. They’re truly the stuff memories are made of. I hope that you have some and that you’re passing them on to your children and grandchildren. Our family has developed a few of our own over the years and we look forward to them every year. Man-made traditions though are just a “ticket” though and miss the real show, or at least, the main story of Christmas. They fail to solve our deepest problems or fulfill our deepest needs.

  Sometimes we turn Christmas into a White Glove inspection. When I was in college, before we went home for the holidays, we had to make certain that our rooms were spic and span. It was called a “White Glove inspection.” Sometimes we do that with Christmas. We sanitize it when we only present a picture-perfect, storybook rendition of what took place in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The straw in the manger is fresh and clean. There’s no umbilical cord to cut and no blood. It’s a “silent night.” The surroundings are strangely free from the pungent odor of manure. Joseph and Mary are calm, cool, and collected. Everyone gets a good night’s sleep. There’s no controversy or gossip surrounding the birth. It’s a pleasant, appealing way to think about Christmas, but it obscures the foulness, uncertainty, and sin that Jesus was born into. We forget that rather than coming for the put-together, well-to-do, and self-sufficient, Jesus identified with the rejected, the slandered, the helpless, and the poor.

  Sometimes we turn Christmas into a Kum Bah Yah moment. A religious world focuses on just one smidgen of the Christmas story, “Peace on earth.” Christmas is manipulated into some U.N. peacekeeping moment. Christmas primarily then becomes about promoting virtues like universal brotherhood, peace, joy, generosity, love, and of course, tolerance. It ignores that the incarnation is an earth-shattering event and forever altered the course of human history. While those are good things and again evidence of God’s common grace, they’re not the Christmas story. We should be thankful that our still culture sets aside a time of year, however commercialized it may be, to celebrate and commend being kind, paying it forward and loving your neighbor. But the fruit of Christmas is impossible to achieve or sustain apart from the root. We understand what love is by looking not to ourselves and our good deeds, but by considering Jesus, who came into the world to lay down His life for us (1 John 3:16). Preaching or singing about peace without recognizing our core need for the Prince of Peace, is a shallow peace indeed. The incarnation, the real Christmas story, is that God became man. It was never meant to be marginalized to a few weeks. It means something cataclysmic every day – Jesus, the eternal Son of God who before time was worshiped by innumerable angels, set aside His glory and entered the world through the birth canal of a young woman that He had created. The fullness of deity took of residence in the body of a baby gasping for its first breath. The One who spoke the universe into existence lay silent, unable to utter a word.

  And He came by choice and with the sole intention of redeeming a fallen and rebellious race through His perfect obedience, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection. The Son of God entered our world of space and time to die on a cross for our sins and be our Savior. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). That’s the real Christmas story!