Rediscovering Christmas: The Gift of Giving and Faith

How’s your Christmas shopping coming along – has it sucked the Christmas spirit right out of you? Trying to find the perfect gifts for the ones I love sometimes threatens to rob me of my Christmas joy. I’ve heard that the tradition of giving gifts is based on the wise men in the Christmas story, but I believe we want to give good gifts because we are made in the image of THE Giver, the King of Glory who gives Himself to us.

Think about it: God created the world to give it to man, the ones to whom He gave His own image! And ever since then, He’s been pouring out gifts of all kinds, both necessities and blessings – life, light, hope, faith. When we were ungrateful and rebellious, He gave His Son to redeem us and His Spirit to empower us. Every day God gives us everything we need to live victoriously. The unchanging God is the giver of all good things (James 1:17), and we’re made to be like Him.

Even knowing all that, sometimes I need to revisit Luke’s account of the worshiping wise men to retain my joy. These pagan scholars from the East studied the stars but knew about the prophecies of a coming King. So when one unique, gloriously brilliant star appeared in the sky, they noticed. Believing it to be the herald of God’s promised gift, the wise men left their old lives behind and set out to worship the promised Gift of God. After months of arduous, desert travel, they arrived in Jerusalem and began asking questions.

The news of their arrival prompted the earthly king to call on the local religious scholars for details about this prophesied King. The Jewish leaders quickly came to share their vast knowledge. They loved the respect and riches studying the Word brought to them, but they had no desire for that Word to come to life and disrupt their status quo. Unlike the wise men who traveled far and left their old lives behind, these fools – living just six miles from the King’s birthplace – clung to their way of life and missed the actual Gift of God.