December Daily: The Best Gifts

-
Three Wrapped Christmas Presents by Everett Johnson
Three Wrapped Christmas Presents

Matthew 2:11 - And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

Several years ago, I heard a sermon about how God prepared for Christmas. Beginning with Mary and Joseph, the preacher told how Jesus’ people, birthplace, language, and culture were prepared. He brought out some interesting historical things that I'd never considered before, but his final point is what hit home to my heart: God gave us His best; am I giving Him my best?

This pastor brought 3 men to the front and gave them each a beautifully wrapped gift and had them open them. The first man found a Nike shoe box with only one shoe in it, and that one shoe was old and worn out, with no shoelace. The second man opened his gift, only to find a nice men's necktie that had been cut in half. The third man looked in his gift bag and found one glove; a nice glove, but only one. As each man opened his gift, the preacher was telling him what a nice gift it was, but we could see they were either worthless or not the best he could have given. And that was the point - am I giving Jesus gifts that are useless or only the leftovers of my life?

As that message hit home in my heart, I realized that we get so caught up in trying to buy gifts and fix food and have parties that we give Jesus only the bare minimum of what we could give to Him - and it's even His birthday we're celebrating! How would I feel if people came to celebrate my birthday and brought shabby gifts for me, but gave each other beautiful gifts and had my party without more than an occasional glance tossed my way? This isn't something new, but it sure touched my heart that night. I don't want to give God my second best, especially not at this time of year. The wise men opened their treasures and presented Him with valuable gifts – their treasures. Let's give to God from our treasure instead of tossing Him whatever we have left over of our hearts and lives.

Comments

  1. Anonymous10:48 AM

    Good thoughts. I heard a similar message not directly related to Christmas when a pastor went to visit with the wayward daughter of a church member. The mother serves tea as they talked, and as he finished he offered her the dregs of his cup. Of course, she was repulsed, and he pointed out that that was exactly what she was doing to God.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tami 4:08 PM

    A wonderful message! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shari6:58 PM

    Wonderful message! On a side note, I tried your Chocolate Crinkle recipe, but I didn't have any chocolate to melt so I used Cocoa Powder and it worked very well! Those are yummy and addicting! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking a minute to read my ramblings and leave a comment! I appreciate it!

Popular posts from this blog

A Week of Modest Dress

-
Image
The rest of this series can be found at these links: Friday , Saturday , Sunday , Monday , Tuesday , Wednesday . Some ladies around the Blogosphere have been posting pictures of themselves going about their everyday routine in dresses. Many of us ladies wear dresses and skirts all the time, and others have asked how we play with our children, do our housework, exercise, in dresses. Candy decided to show some ladies doing just that on her blog, and asked for ladies to post pics on their blogs too. This kind of thing appeals to me, so I had to get in on the action on this one. I'll post pics each day for a week (if I can keep my son Andrew taking pictures!), and you'll see a little bit of our life as a pastor's family, as well as see how another lady and her daughter (though not so many pics of her - she's camera shy!) live out their conviction of modest dress in their everyday lives. Here I am this morning, as Samuel and I left the house for our walk. I alterna...
Read more

Who - or What - Is Your God?

-
I've read lots of opinions on lots of things during my years online. Wes was a programmer in the US Air Force from 1990 till 1996, and naturally, as e-mail and the internet came into more common use, our family was on the front edge of technology. I remember searching the web for Christian women's sites, and finding very little. After a while, more and more Christian sites began showing up, and I began reading and joining forums. It came to the point that I was reading about lifestyles varying somewhat from my rather mainstream independent Baptist upbringing. Some of it made sense to me, other things were a little far out there for me. None of it was wrong, though, and everyone had Scripture to back up what they believed. The latest thing to hit the internet is the blog. Everybody has one, at least everyone who knows what a blog is! And that includes me, of course. I love blogging. Anyway . . . we all read each other's blogs and it's almost like a parallel soc...
Read more

How Do You Respond?

-
This might get a little preachy, but it's something that hit me square in the face yesterday and I thought it would be a good thing to share. To set the stage: Yesterday morning, Wes and I were getting ready to take the kids shopping down in Bellingham, WA. The Lord has blessed us with an extra bit this month, and the kids and Wes needed some things, so after Andrew and Beth were finished with school, we were planning to head out. I needed to know what Wes wanted to do about lunch and supper, since we'd be leaving right around lunch time and we weren't sure when we'd get back home. I asked him if he wanted me to fix our main meal of the day before we left (which we've been doing recently), and he said no; we'd take some snacks with us. So I was planning what I'd do before we left so supper would be quicker when we got home. He casually said, "I thought we might stop at Red Robin (a restaurant) on the way home," to which I immediately respond...
Read more