The perfect gift

Yesterday, the family and I decided to head out to one of our local malls to finish our Christmas shopping. This mall is a bit on the larger side for our area – over 175 specialty stores and restaurants.  None of us are what you’d classify “a mall shopper”.  We are more of the ‘get in, get it, get out’ people.  …Did I mention this is the last shopping weekend before Christmas? Usually we are more of the early shopper type but it seems like this year time slipped past us.  So it was an experience!  I paired off with one of my boys, as did my husband and our daughter who was on a mission, left all of us in the dust as she set of to find the perfect gift for one of her brothers. 

The deeper into the mall child2 and I went, the more crowded and busy it got.  Child 2 looks over to me as we are pacing, dodging, and lunging through crowd spurts and says “I like the mall’. “we hardly ever come here buddy.  It’s easer to shop the strips by us – get in, get out” I reply.  He says ‘I don’t like shopping here – I like walking around and watching here.  The people are interesting.’

And on we walked.

I started to consider not the crowd, or the waves of shoppers, but the people.  They were fun to look at and watch – definitely interesting: goth teens leaning against a store front giggling about an older woman in one of the hipper stores; the dad corralling three kids while he was chasing to catch up with mom; the older gentleman sitting in a seat outside the woman’s dressing room waiting, and waiting, and..; the elderly couple holding hands as they went into the Hallmark store…There were many people in the crowd, this huge uncountable crowd, each with their own purpose – especially on this weekend before Christmas – the purpose of seeking that ‘perfect gift’.

I began to think… I know what it is like to be the one who’s found that perfect gift for that very special person.  This is a person I care so very much for and want to express my appreciation, my care, my love wrapped inside.  There is great joy in giving that perfect gift – especially when you see the great joy found when it is received.

That perfect gift… I’d bet an innumerable number of people shopping were striving for that “perfect gift’.

And then I smile – not because I already found that ‘perfect gift’, but because it hit me that I have been the recipient of “THE” perfect gift. 

It was given to me by my FATHER in a manager wrapped in swaddling cloth. I am reminded of this even by the signs all over the mall for Christmas begins with C-H-R-I-S-T.  I can proclaim with Paul “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”  Thinking on into the book of Ephesians I am lovingly told “for it is by grace you have been saved through faith – this is not from yourselves, it is the GIFT of God.”   I didn’t do anything to received this perfect gift – it was not my good dees or my being a good person –it was solely the grace of the  Heavenly Father and out of his great love and compassion that He found the perfect gift to give me.

Each person in this crowded mall, each person in this fear-filled, hesitant, defiant country – each person in this whole world has been given the perfect gift - His son, who would later take our punishment willingly and completely out of a very personal deep love.

It is my prayer as you search for or receive “the perfect gift’ you will reflect on THE PERFECT GIFT given for you – the FATHER’S beloved child.  It begins and is C-H-R-I-S-T-mas.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:22-23