Devotional from Pastor Dave December 13, 2023

What is the best Christmas gift you’ve ever received?

This is the question I’ve been asking some of the folks I’ve been spending time with this past week. Some have a gift that immediately comes to mind, and it’s been a delight to watch their faces light up and to listen to the stories they tell. Others have taken a little time to consider their response to the question, but they have endearing stories to tell, too.

Many—in fact, most—of the gifts were received during childhood. There was the green bicycle with the banana seat. The erector set. The gaming system that one actually had to wait a whole year until the next Christmas to receive. My favorite Christmas gift was a boom box I got when I was 11 years-old in 1984. Not only could I make my own mix tapes by recording songs off the radio, but I could also record audio journals of my adventurous young life!

Some of the gifts were not material things but rather were experiences shared with loved ones—a family trip to the beach for Christmas. And some of the gifts were people—a loved one come home from overseas, the birth of a child, an engagement.

As joyful as it is to receive an amazing Christmas gift, as I’ve grown older, I’ve also come to appreciate the joy in giving good gifts. This year I found an absolutely perfect gift to give one of my best friends for Christmas. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees it!

That’s gotten me thinking about the joy that must have filled God’s heart when God gave us the greatest Christmas gift the world has ever known—the gift of God’s own self in the child born in Bethlehem. As joyful as it can be for us in receiving the gift of Jesus into our hearts and lives and celebrating that gift at Christmas, think of the joy God must have felt in giving us the gift of Jesus in the first place.

In this season of giving and receiving gifts, may the same spirit of joy that is in the heart of the divine come to fill our own human hearts as well, the joy of self-giving love.