Gifts and Givers

Description

Good morning, friends. As we step into this Season of Giving, I find myself slowing down and asking a deeper question about gifts and givers. If we get enamored with gifts alone, especially in our spiritual life, we can quietly slide God out of focus. I see that danger clearly in the prosperity gospel, which promises health and wealth as proof of right belief. That simply is not the Christian message, and it certainly is not how the Lord works. Joy in the heart. Peace in the heart. Love in the heart. Those gifts lead us back to the Giver, who never operates transactionally, like handing out cookies for good behavior, but instead creates systems of connection, help, and relationship. The gift is relationship. The echo of care moving back and forth. That, to me, is how God thinks. How do we connect people? How do we help them help each other? When we live that way, we are bringing as in heaven, so upon the earth, and Christmas opens up into something far more real, far more beautiful, and far more alive than anything we could wrap and place under a tree.