re-gift

What part of receiving a gift is most important to you?

I am the type of person who appreciates the thought and sentiment behind a gift… probably more than the actual gift itself. It means the world to me that someone gifted me with something precious when they didn’t have to. Perhaps this is why I try to not expect gifts on Christmas or for my birthday… because it means so much more when I’m not expecting anything and someone has thought of something to give me.

Gifts are important to my husband in a different way… the gift itself expresses care and love for him.

Maybe you are wired the same? Or perhaps in a completely different way!

Regardless of how we are wired, we all can appreciate receiving gifts, right?… and with it being the Christmas season – isn’t it all about the gifts?

We celebrate Jesus… the greatest gift of all!

Maybe you celebrate Jesus by giving gifts to others… honoring the greatest gift God gave us in His Son.
Or, perhaps you practice Advent leading up to Christmas day… preparing your heart and home for the celebration of the Messiah coming.
Some may read the “Christmas story” Christmas morning.

Now, days after Christmas…
Family has returned home and people have started to get back into their “routines” of normal life…

Does it seem strange that this greatest gift has almost been forgotten?

The day after Christmas store clerks had noticed the “air” in the stores changed from just days prior… stating that people were being rude as they return their unwanted gifts. How sad is that?

I was reading in John… and that first chapter is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

Can I share it with you?

The first few verses talk about God’s Word… how it was first… how the Word was God. Then in verses 3-5 it shares how everything was created through him – His breath, His Word… and what came into existence was LIFE.

“What came into existence was Life
and the Life was Light to live by.
The life-Light blazed out of the
darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.”

It goes on in verses 6-8 to describe a man, John (the baptist) being sent to point everyone to this light (Jesus). John wasn’t the light himself, he was like a telescope pointing to the light… showing everyone where to look.

Look at verses following…

9-13 “The Life-Light (Jesus) was the real thing:
Every person entering Life
He brings into Light.
He was in the world,
The world was there through him,
and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to His own people,
but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
who believed He was who He claimed
and would do what He said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
not the blood-begotten,
not the flesh-begotten,
not the sex-begotten.”

Do you know what that means?

Those who believe Jesus is who He claimed to be… and choose to do what He said – God makes into their true-selves… child-of-God selves.

That is what God-begotten means – child-of-God selves… who we are created to be!

The next set of verses goes into describing how this Word…
the Word that was first…
the Word was God in readiness for God from day one (vs 1-2)…
this Word – became flesh and blood (Jesus).

look at verse 14:
“The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.”

Our God is a generous God…

Look at verses 16-18:
“We all live off His generous bounty,
gift after gift after gift.
We got the basics from Moses,
and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
This endless knowing and understanding –
all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
No one has ever seen God,
not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
who exists at the very heart of the Father,
has made Him plain as day.”

I keep thinking about how Christmas comes every year… and every year I want to make it different… focus more than the last on what really matters. I want to not get all caught up on the rush and keep my eyes on the “reason for the season”…

But – if it is really about the season – then it’s over now (or at least will be over next week)… and that’s not how the story goes!

God is with us now.

He is with us in a way the people under the old covenant never got to experience.

This is life-changing stuff... not something we celebrate for a few weeks once a year.

I’ve been mulling over what this means…

If this baby Jesus coming is life changing –

How is it going to change me?

My husband and I celebrated our 23rd anniversary on December 21st. Believe it or not, I have a few wedding gifts that we still use. I still have a glass mixing bowl set I use – along with matching mixing spoons… and we still have a few wall-hangings…

But, there is one gift that we have hung onto for all these years and it has stayed in the box.

It was one of those gifts where you think “Why did they give us this?” when you open it. In an effort to not offend our wedding guest who may have given us this gift – I won’t describe it 😉 Let’s just say, it stayed in the box… through many moves… and it never broke. Occasionally we would open the box and laugh while we considered all of it’s uses. We entertained the idea of bringing it to a white elephant gift exchange… but never did.

Last summer we finally put this gift out at a garage sale we had… it was one of the only things that sold [or maybe my husband just gave it to the guy! I may never know].

For years we had held onto this gift… we hid it away in it’s box and let it sit taking up space.

I wonder if we are like this with the greatest gift found in Jesus?

All the excitement and preparation to celebrate that our God is with us… put away with the Christmas decorations and stored until next year – when maybe, what we really need to be doing is regifting.

Look at John 1:16 again…
“We all live off His generous bounty,
gift after gift after gift.”

Gift after gift after gift…

This gift of Jesus is LIFE and it never runs dry.

It is a gift to live off of…

and it is a gift to re-gift and share.

I am a bit eager to take down the Christmas tree… and put away the lights and decorations… but, as we go into the months of winter, I want to celebrate that we are no longer waiting for the Messiah. We are no longer waiting for our God to come and save.

Immanuel.

God is with us now… and here to save a weary, tired world.

Let’s regift this incredible LIFE-saving gift!

Read more in my devotional Haywire Christmas: Inviting Jesus Into the Mess on Amazon Kindle Here.