The Greatest Gift I Ever Received

'Tis the season of Christmas once more.  And I have been conspicuously absent from writing for a long while now.  What can I say?   Sometimes life just gets in the way.  And right now penning these thoughts is getting in the way of a whole lotta' other stuff.  Like wrapping and card writing!  Not to mention the whole stack of cards that I need to read which I have put aside till I can actually sit down and enjoy opening them!

As I have been out the past several days doing the "conspicuous consumption" thing that drives our economy at this time of year, I have been thinking about gifts.  This year I did things a bit differently.  Instead of giving a lot of "stuff" I gave donations in honor of loved ones to good causes.  We gave gifts to a food bank. To World Vision.  Amnesty International.  A scholarship fund.  A church in Kenya.  An eclectic collection of charities to be sure, but all equally valid and important.  A mix of sacred and secular causes....

These are all great gifts, and yet I am still struck by the fact that none of them represents what I consider to be even close to the greatest gift I ever received.  And that made me wonder something.  If I asked people this question, what kind of answers might I receive?  I  have spent quite a bit of time musing about this today as I dashed around from Point A to Point B searching for last minute items. 

For myself, I don't have to even struggle to come up with the answer to this question.  I wonder if everyone can say the same?  I think about the many wonderful gifts I have been blessed with over the course of my lifetime  Loving parents.  A stable family growing up.  A good and loving husband. Healthy children.  A stable career field and gainful employment over the past 28 years.  A lovely home.  Financial security. Ridiculously vibrant health.  Amazing friendships.  A passion for music. What a bounty of blessings!  Anyone would be lucky to have one or two of these things, let alone a list this long.  These are all precious things and I am grateful for all of them.  But none of them is the greatest gift I ever received.  No, that is something else all together different....

The greatest gift I ever received was a direct intervention in my life by the Hand of God which showed me unequivocally that our God is a God who saves.  He is a God who intervenes.  He is a God who sees our need and responds.  He is a relational God.  He knows His children by name and He wants them to hear His voice and respond to His love, His mercy, His leading, and His guidance.   He is a God who orchestrates circumstances, events, "coincidences"  in our lives to grab us and get our attention.  I am certain looking back that He was jumping up and down trying to get me to see Him for many years and I was just going along blithely not paying much attention.  Until one day when I was brought to a screeching halt by life events that knocked the wind out of my sails.  Then, suddenly, I realized that I was alone in the dark in my little sailboat without any emergency equipment.  This was a scary place.  Fortunately, God had not forgotten me and He was about to send a really impressive rescue swimmer with a sturdy boat and a great big search light.  This would end up being the best, the very best gift, He would ever give me: the gift of Life and an interpreter to help me see Him at work in my life in ways that had previously escaped my notice somehow.....

It seems strange to me now from the vantage point of the current summit on which I am resting for a moment, that there was a time in my life when I could not see God nearly so clearly as I do now.   I have used this example before.  If you have never smelled the scent of a rose, then you don't know what a rose smells like.  You may recognize a pleasant smell, but you can't identify it as coming from the rose.  Thus it is with God.  At least for some people, and this was certainly the case with me.  I just was not in tune with His Spirit.  This takes some training,  Some discipline.  Some study.  Some practice with discernment - and a skilled teacher to help you see things that you might otherwise miss.

Now that my own spirit has been tuned and honed, I am like a receiver that picks up signals all the time!  It is amazing, fascinating, intensely gratifiyng to walk this way in His Spirit.  The things I can now see, sense, know somehow, guide my daily course. They enable me to go where He sends me, say what He tells me,  pray what He leads me to pray and with whom.  These are the best days.  When I know we are in tune.  And when the tuner gets out of whack, it is surely a sign that there is something in me that needs to be straightened out. Some kind of sin that needs to be confessed and dealt with.  Because you see, I now know the difference:  a life lived on my own, by my own wits and skill, and a life lived in daily dependence upon His.  There is no comparison, and  I would not go back for anything.

So this is my greatest gift ever.  The gift of knowing God's presence. The ability to identify Him so readily in my day to day life. Being able to recognize the sound of His voice. And the friendship within which I was taught these powerful lessons. Amazing, amazing grace, indeed.....


"It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!"  The best gifts usually do!

So what's your greatest gift ever? Shalom!