All I want for Christmas . . .

It’s now officially the Christmas season. People are now rushing around, trying to get the best deals on gifts for friends and loved ones. Gadgets and toys, all priced to move, the perfect way to show people just how much you love them.

Pardon the above sarcasm, but the older I grow, the less I understand the correlation between stuff and affection. Is the trading of items the best way we know of showing each other that we care? I refuse to believe that. That’s not the example of love that has been set before us.

Sacrifice is the level of love to which we are called. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) This is the example we’ve been given to follow. This is how Jesus showed His love for us, by giving His life in exchange for ours, so that we could know the Father, so that we, as broken, flawed people, could be seen as flawless by God, and rescued from the Hell that would await us otherwise.

Every year, my parents ask me what I want for Christmas, and every year I struggle with what to ask for. I insist that I really don’t want or need anything, and they press until I name something. I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s just that, while in the past I’d have had no trouble listing off a litany of things that would make my life “easier,” or “better,” now I find that all I want is to see my folks and spend some time with them, to live more fully in the life that Jesus has set before me, to live out the plans He has laid out for me, and . . . well, you get the idea. These are things that can’t be found in any store. They’re matters of the heart, and there is no price tag that can be placed on them. Make no mistake, “stuff” may help the economy right now, but the most important commodity our world has is the human heart and the condition of the soul. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” (C. S. Lewis, “The Weight Of Glory”)

So, along with the physical gifts that tradition demands we buy, let your heart be known as well. I am blessed to have people in my life who are very good at this, and I strive to be better at it. My prayer is that this Christmas is less about the material, and far more about the eternal.

Merry Christmas, my friends. May God bless you far beyond anything you could imagine.