Saturday – December 18, 2010

Bringing our Best Gifts to God
Read: Matthew 2:11-12

When I was four years old our Sunday school class was collecting toys for needy children. Our teacher told us that we shouldn’t bring toys with which nobody would want to play. She told us to bring a toy that we would like to have ourselves. I went home and picked out my favorite gift I had gotten for my birthday that year; a “Whee-lo.” I forgot to bring it to Sunday school on the day we were to send the toys to Kingdom House. My mother brought me back to church after lunch and I went back to the Sunday school room and laid the “Whee-lo” on top of the sealed barrel marked “Kingdom House.” The next week in Sunday school all the toys had been delivered, but my “Whee-lo” that I had sacrificed for those needy children was being played with by the children in my class. It had never gotten into the barrel. My childhood heart cried because I had wanted the gift to be so special.

As I think about God’s gift to us of his only Son, that God must have felt even more devastated than a four year old who had given up her favorite toy, only to have such a sacrifice become a joke as the gift was never recognized as special. From the very beginning, people such as Herod tried to do away with this special gift from God. I’m sure God’s heart must have cried too. For God had given us the greatest gift God knew how to give, and God’s Son, the gift, was ridiculed and put to death. But…God’s gift was so special that the nature of the gift was to turn sorrow into joy…and Christ arose to show that even sorrow had no power over God.

Christ continues to turn sorrow into joy in the lives of those who allow God’s gift to be a special one. May the special gift of God, God’s Son, touch your lives this Christmas in such a way that you will never again have a sorrow so deep that you feel God could never reach it.

Prayer: O God, above all, let us remember the gift you gave to us! During this Christmas season, help us to find a way to share your special gift through our giving, touching each person with the wonder of Christ’s birth. Amen

Wendy Goodwin