I read this week that every Christmas, Americans send out over two billion Christmas cards. That’s a lot of cards! Is it any wonder that the mail person isn’t on time during the holidays? Of course, few of us simply buy pre-made cards. Instead we go to extraordinary lengths to make our own Christmas cards. These cards are shameless and self-indulgent. Here’s a picture we took for our Christmas cards. (Note to reader- the card was a picture of the Morrissette's four dogs.) Do you realize how long and how many shots it took me to get all these dogs to sit still so I could take their picture? Thank the Lord for digital cameras!
Another thing I read is that on average, we spend $795.86 buying gifts for others. (source: forbes.com). Now that adds up to a lot of money! Think for a moment of how much time and energy you’ve spent during these past few weeks searching for that perfect gift for your wife or husband, for your boyfriend or girlfriend, for your children, or for a friend. Gifts are such an important part of our Christmas celebrations. By the time Christmas rolls around, it's virtually impossible to think of anything else except gifts!
We expend a lot of effort to find perfect gifts.
How many of you are already plotting your last minute Christmas Eve shopping strategy? "We’ll get out of church, grab a quick bite, and then hit the stores one last time!" We don’t want to admit it, do we? I don’t mean to be the Scrooge or anything, but I find the whole gift thing exhausting. First you battle all the traffic, which is bumper to bumper and people cutting in and out of the lanes. Everyone is impatient, honking, and taking the best parking spaces.
Then you roam into store after store searching for that perfect gift. You shop among the kids who are crying and couples who are arguing. Then once you find that perfect gift, you stand in line waiting forever as the clerk calls for a price check on merchandise which is clear on the other side of the store. Of course the real work has just begun! You still have to get home, wrap the gift, hide the gift, transport the gift to wherever you’re celebrating, and then spend the next few months working overtime to pay off those credit cards. $800. $1600. $2400. But finding that perfect gift, that’s what its all about. Spare no expense. Spare no measure.
Every Christmas I find myself getting caught up in the whole gift giving thing. This year was no exception. Gotta have this. Gotta have that. It’s insanity. But earlier this week, I started thinking about the ultimate Christmas gift. If someone were to give the ultimate Christmas gift, what would it look like? What characteristics would it have? And I thought of a few things.
The greatest gifts are carefully prepared.
I think that the greatest gifts are carefully prepared. You can tell when someone has run out at the last minute to grab a gift, versus when someone has really taken the time to fashion a gift perfectly suited to your needs and desires. If I ran out and got Lara a gift card at the last moment, she would be offended. And it would reflect poorly on my love for her. No, she desires a gift that demonstrates that I truly know her and love her and value her. She wants to know that I’ve thought about her and didn’t just rush around at the last minute looking for just any old gift that would do.Her gift has to say Dale Earnhart, Jr. on it, or Duke basketball, or Beanie Baby, or be Schnauzer’esk. Only then will she not kick me out of the house.
The greatest gifts are creatively packaged.
The greatest gifts are not just carefully prepared. I think that they are creatively packaged. My brother Mike takes the reward for creatively packaged gifts. You will never meet anyone who wraps presents so flawlessly. When he gives you a gift, you don’t even want to open it. You just want to stare at the wrapping.
Mike is a bit of a perfectionist. All right, he is an obsessive-compulsive fanatic! I have never actually seen him wrap a present, but I have theories about how he does it. By trade, he is an engineer. He goes into factories and measures everything down to within a millimeter. He then develops these elaborate computer drawings based on his measurements. Anyway, I think he uses Auto-Cad, computer aided drafting, to wrap presents. In my mind I can see him measuring the patterns on the wrapping paper and inputting the dimensions of each gift. You probably think I’m joking. Ask Lara. She'll confirm my story!
The greatest gifts have a compelling purpose.
Carefully prepared. Creatively packaged. But, I think the greatest gifts also have a compelling purpose. I love gifts that are immensely practical. The first year after I was married, my oldest brother Chris got me this electronic kleenex box. On the front of the box was a bathroom. If you hit the button on the mirror, you would hear shattering glass. If you hit the button on the sink, you would hear running water. If you hit the button on the toilet, well, you really don’t want to know what the box did then. When I got the gift Lara gave me the strangest look. I was thinking the toilet kleenex box would look nice on the end table in our family room, but she thought differently!
Think of all the stuff you get for Christmas each year. Most of it is utterly useless! If you cannot sell it at a garage sale, you re-gift it and give it to someone the next year. My dad asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year. I said, "Give me something useful, something practical, and something I can use for years to come."
The greatest gifts have a costly price.
I could go on here, but let me mention one other characteristic. The greatest gifts are carefully prepared, creatively packaged, and have a compelling purpose, but they also have a costly price. I know that there are people who pretend not to notice how much a gift costs. But in your heart of hearts, you take notice.
Every year in the Morrissette household my brothers and I had a tradition of setting a price limit on what we’d spend on one another. In essence we would say, "How much do we love each other this year? Do we love each other ten dollars' worth? Certainly no more than fifteen dollars' worth!" The cost of a gift was like a statement of worth. "I love you this much. I’ll go this far."
Now I’m not talking about the way things should be. I’m talking about the way things are. We notice whether a gift is carefully prepared, creatively packaged, has a compelling purpose, or has a costly price. We just do. We can spot great gift givers miles away! I'll bet that there are some great gift givers in this room. Some of you started way back in January. Some of you have put extraordinary thought behind the gifts that you purchased. Some of you give gifts of enormous practical value. Some of you go far beyond the $795.86 average. You want there to be no doubt about how much you love your family and friends.
The ultimate gift giver gave us the most perfect gift.
It’s like I said, I started thinking this week about the ultimate gift and about the ultimate gift giver. The ultimate gift giver gave us the most perfect gift. James 1:17 (NIV) says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."
Romans 6:23 (NIV) says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Ephesians 2:4-8 (NIV) says, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."
In 2 Corinthians 9:15 (NIV) Paul exclaims, "Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" Jesus isn’t exactly the gift the world is thinking about this Christmas, but he is the ultimate gift nonetheless, given by the Father.
First, Jesus was a gift carefully prepared.
2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 (NIV) says, "But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Before the foundations of the world, God was making careful preparation to send his Son into the world so that we might believe on him and receive eternal life. What does it say about God that before the creation of the world, God chose for us to be saved through faith in Jesus Christ? God's plan of salvation wasn’t hastily conceived. He planned it before the foundations of the world were laid. He revealed it Adam and Eve, to Moses, to his prophets, to his people Israel, and now to the Church.
Jesus was a gift creatively packaged.
Jesus was the most carefully prepared, carefully planned gift in all of history. Jesus was also a gift creatively packaged. The Jewish people expected the Christ to come rolling in on the clouds with trumpets and thunder to violently overthrow the Roman empire, and slay the enemies of God. But how did the Christ come to earth? Luke 2:6-7 (NIV) says, "While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her first-born, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."
Luke 2:8-16 (NIV)continues, "And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.' Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.' When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, 'Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.' So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.' "
Jesus was a gift with a compelling purpose.
God’s gift to men, his Son Jesus Christ, was carefully planned from the foundation of the earth. He was creatively packaged in the form of an infant. He had a compelling purpose. Mark 10:45 (NIV) tells us, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
John 6:38-40 (NIV) says, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."
Jesus was a gift which was priceless.
God’s gift was carefully planned, creatively packaged in a manger, and had a compelling purpose of offering life to the world. Did I mention the costly price of this gift? John 3:16 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
Romans 5:6-10 (NIV) says, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!"
Jesus Christ is the ultimate gift.
What I am saying is that Jesus Christ is the ultimate gift. There is no gift more carefully planned, creatively packaged, of more compelling purpose, or of more costly price than the gift of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.
This past week a tragic accident occurred in Hong Kong. A young schoolboy was struck by a bus, sustaining fatal brain injuries. His 41-year-old mother, a single parent, stood watch over his lifeless body, grieving the loss of her precious son, trying to make sense of it all. Could any good come of this?
Against the protest of superstitious relatives, the mother used the occasion to bring hope to other families. She offered her son’s life to others, and through a rare mass donation of vital organs, was able to save the lives of at least seven other children. The mother is quoted, "(My son) is very great. Even though he's left us, we can still hear him breathe, and his heart beat. He's already become an angel." If the precious gift of this mother can bring that kind of hope to seven families, then how much more can the gift of God’s one and only Son bring hope to the world?