God was the first gift giver.
Giving gifts is one of the longest enduring traditions of all time. In the Bible, God was the first gift-giver. In Genesis 1:29-30 (NIV) God says to man, " 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.' And it was so."
See, now you have an excuse to give a fruit basket this Christmas!Or even better, a fruitcake! Or perhaps a parakeet, a slithering salamander, or a house plant. Just tell your loved ones that it was good enough for God to give, so it surely ought to be good enough for you to give. Okay, maybe not.
But seriously, giving gifts is one of the longest enduring traditions of all time. If you get a chance, go to Wikipedia and look up the word "potlaches". Native Americans used to hold potlatches—from which we get our word "potlucks".
During the warmer summer months, Indians would plant their crops, hunt wild game, and procure wealth. But in the cold wintry months, they would host events to share and redistribute their wealth. There would be singing, dancing, and people would trade gifts such as dried foods, sugar, flour, material things, ormoney. During these potlatches families raised their statusby how much wealth they could share with others! Sounds a lot like our Christmas celebrations, doesn’t it!
Potlatches were banned and made illegal in the lateninteenth century at the urging of Christian missionaries, because they were seen as wasteful, unproductive, and uncivilized!
The four principles of gift giving.
1.) Don’t go cheap.
There’s a special art to giving a gift. This art isknown as the principle of reciprocity. The principle of reciprocity is that our gifts must be equal in value. If the gift I give you is worth less than the gift you give me, it can cause embarrassment. And if your gift cost you more, it can also lead to sore feelings. Maybe it means thatyou value the relationship a bit more than I do. "What? You just gave me fruit? That’s it? I bought you diamonds!"
2.)Don’t go lavish.
But you can also get in trouble if the gift you give is far more expensive than the gift you are receiving. If you go too far overboard, the person might be left feeling that you would rather give an object than to give your love and affection. It’s like the husband who is always away on business and is usually detached from his family, and out of guilt, he goes all out for Christmas. "Gee Dad, thanks for more stuff. We’d rather have our Dad."
3.)Don’t go inequitable.
Another way you can get in trouble is by how much you give certain family members. If you go all out for your parents but hold back in what you give to your in-laws, you will be in big trouble. And if you give more to one child than to his sibling, it can leave a feeling of being left out. Nothing like a little sibling rivalry or marital conflict to liven up our Christmas celebrations!
4.) Don’t go irrelevant.
It’s not just the cost of a gift we should be concerned with. We need to choose that perfect gift. How many times have you received a gift from someone that had absolutely no relevance to your life? How times have you given a gift that had absolutely no relevance to someone else’s life?
Gifts show how much we care, how much we are paying attention, how well we know another person, and how in tune we are with their needs. One of the worst questions to ask someone at Christmas is, "What do you want for Christmas?" It’s like saying, "I barely know you and I’ve hardly paid attention to you. How can I make it even more obvious?" There are few greater hurts than when people who are supposed to most love you and know you totally miss the mark.
Two principlesfor gift receiving.
1.) Don’t be ungrateful.
And what about giving thanks for a gift? You can’t just tell someone, "Thanks. Thanks for the socks. Thanks for the flashlight and batteries." You have to be quick and clever and you must honor their thoughtfulnessright on the spot. "Thank you so much these knee-high tube socks and the ultra-bright flashlight. These socks will keep my toes warm at night when I have to get up and walk across the ice-cold tile floor to the refrigerator. And this flashlight will light my way in the middle of the night, so I don’t stub my toe. And how did you know about my late night eating disorder?"
2.)Don’t refuse gifts.
And let’s not forget the cardinal sin of gift giving. The cardinal sin is refusing a gift. When you refuse someone’s gift or tell them not to get you anything, you are basically telling them, "I don’t need you. I don’t want you to think about me.I don’t want you to care about me."
As Christians we often have a complex about giving and receiving gifts. Are we being too selfish? Are we being too materialistic? Are we caving into the values of a consumerist society? Do we really need gifts in order to show our love? Can’t we just skip the gift giving ritual altogether?
Gifts define our relationships with others.
No matter what you may think, gifts really do define our relationships with others. They show how much we care or don’t care. They show how much we love or don’t love, how much we pay attention or don’t pay attention. They can strengthen our bond with others as easily as they can destroy our bond with others. Gifts demonstrate who is important in our life and who is not important.
So this past week I have been thinking about what an extraordinary risk it is for God to give us a gift. Is it enough that God has given us the breath of life? Is it enough that he has entrusted all creation to us—every plant, every tree, and every animal? Has God been properly reciprocated? Has he already given us enough that we should be grateful and live fulfilled lives?
Or has God maybe gone too far? Has he given us all these good material things to enjoywhile he has been strangely absent from our lives? Like an absent father, has he given us the world and everything in it instead of giving himself?
And has God been equitable?Has he been fair? You look at the world and there is an unequal distribution of food, clothing, and good things. Some have abundance, but the majority are in want. Does God love the whole world or just one part of the world this Christmas?
And has God given us some gift that is irrelevant to our lives?"Thanks God. Thanks for the choir robe, but I don’t sing. God, I don’t really have any use for that. Thanks, but no thanks. Don’t bother giving me anything.I don’t have room to store that. Did you leave a gift receipt with that?"
And has God in any way devalued or declined our gifts? Is the message of Christmas that we need God, but he doesn’t really need us? I suppose in a technical sense God doesn’t need anything from us. But does God care about us? Does he love us? Does he want our affection? Does he want our worship? Does he want us to reciprocate with gifts?
God is the perfect gift giver.
Here is what I’m thinking about this Christmas. It's that God is the absolute perfect gift giver and gift receiver. He absolutely nails it! So here is what we read in the Bible about God's gifts.
John 3:16 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life."
What does this verse have to do with gifts? Everything. The first and greatest gift giver ever is God himself. What compelled God to give? It wasn’t obligatory. It wasn’t tradition. It was because he so loved us.And who did God love? Who was on his list? It wasn’t just the nice. It was both the naughty and the nice!God so loved the world. At Christmas God was offering the same gift to every single person in the world.
And God didn’t just give us words in a book. He didn’t just send us some impersonal Hallmark greeting card. He didn’t give us some material thing in the place of presents. He gave us himself.God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. No one can say, "Gee, thanks for the stuff, but we wanted you."
God is the perfect gift receiver.
But God isn’t just a great giver, he is a great receiver too! He gives himself to us through his Son, but invites us to give all of ourselves to him through faith. The invitation is that, "whoever believes" can receive God’s gift. The invitation is that whoever trusts in God’s Son, "shall not perish but have eternal life."
And what exactly is this gift of eternal life? Eternal life isn’t a material thing we possess. "Here you go, have some of this." God’s gift of eternal life isn’t a thing. It is an eternal relationship. When God gives us life, he is giving us himself. Just as God is light and God is love, Jesus is the truth and Jesus is the way. Therefore,Jesus Christ is life. To have Christ is to have life, but to refuse to Christ is to refuse eternal life. God is life!
John 1:1-18 (NIV) tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."
"There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God."
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, 'This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' ' From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known."
This Christmas God gives us life. He gives us all of himself through his Son Jesus Christ. He invites us to give all of ourselves back to him.