Pastor Waybright at Lake Avenue Church shared a message at the Christmas Eve service regarding the giving of gifts that inspired the following meditation:
Giving comes from the verb, "to give". It means to hand something over to another person or being. To give food, shelter, a gift, etcetera, is the act of giving. To be a giving person, we must practice this action regularly. In addition, we must practice it selflessly. We give to benefit another person, to honor them, or to fill a need they might have and not our own. In like, we have our needs met in the process but that does not prompt our actions or thoughts.
To give is the ability to say, "No" to The Self and "Yes" to The Other. For the 12 days of Christmas, True Love practices the art of giving increasingly elaborate gifts to the Beloved. These 12 days are the Magi's Travelling Days. If they were flying to Bethlehem, it would be their in-flight time plus their airport wait time. 12 Days for those guys to walk across the wilderness following some bright star in the sky just to give gifts to a poor baby an angel had told them was someone important. These guys sacrificed to give their gifts and nowhere is it noted that they did it out of reverence to Self and what they would get out of it but in reverence instead to the baby and the desire to express their truest feelings about His entry in to the world.
It's this that we can meditate on this holiday season. What does it mean for us to do things in deference to The Self that consumes our days and instead pay homage in gift-giving kindness to The Other that we are thankful for, hopeful for, happy with, and do it for that reason alone. What does it mean to worship God because He is God and worthy of our Praise and for that reason alone? We surely can't do this alone and it is only by the grace-gift given to us by God first that we are able to do so. May we worship Him, may we fall on our knees, and may our sacrifices and hardships be negligible in comparison to the opportunity to give we are given.
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