The Wrong Christmas Gift

Frederick Buechner writes in his book Listening to Your Life, "The gifts that the three Wise Men, or Kings, or Magi, brought to the manger in Bethlehem cost them plenty but seem hardly appropriate to the occasion. Maybe they were all they could think of for the child who had everything. In any case, they set them down on the straw - the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh - worshiped briefly, and then returned to the East where they had come from. It gives you pause to consider how, for all their great wisdom, they overlooked the one gift that the child would have been genuinely pleased to have someday,and that was the gift of themseves and their love." I read this and I thought. There are so many times when I (we) think that if I give God my time (volunteering to lead worship, work with youth or sunday school) and my tithes ($$$) then He will be happy with the gift that I brought Him. But really what Jesus is looking for is US! our LOVE!! Not the love that we proclaim with our lips, but the love that requires us to spend time with Him, the love that drives us to silence so we can just sit and listen to Him. A REAL love. And at the end of the day this is the only gift the God is looking for!