First Monday in Advent

The Measure of Things

We see it every year on T.V. —in fact it’s almost a sitcom cliché: Christmas draws near and the bumbling husband has no idea what to get for his new wife. One day she complains about a faulty vacuum cleaner, and a dim light bulb illuminates his imagination. 

 As Christmas Day arrives, the unsuspecting clod, beaming with pride, anticipates his wife’s reaction to her gift. How thoughtful, how observant of him to note her needs. After all, she never even asked him for a new one. He proved just clever enough to mentally mark it down when she expressed her disappointment in the old one.

 He always opens his gift first; doing so makes the contrast more excruciating. His young wife has searched out the perfect gift for her husband and given him exactly what he wants. And somehow receiving this great gift raises his anticipation for her to open her present. He can already hear the reciprocating joy as she removes the first layer of wrapping paper. 

 The last shred of feather-weight paper reveals the new vacuum, but that same light paper hits the floor with a thud. 

 She sits with pursed lips. She utters no words. She bursts into tears and runs from the room.

 The poor dolt asks himself, “What just happened?”

 Most husbands understand that getting one’s wife a vacuum for Christmas usually (though not always, let’s be fair) ends badly—though many fail to understand why. Because gifts indicate the nature of a relationship. A gift sends a message. And the wrong gift sends a wrong message, one that the receiver reads as devaluing. For many, a gift measures the health of the relationship. And when a husband buys his wife an impersonal household appliance for Christmas, he risks sending the message that he undervalues her as a person and values instead the work she performs that benefits him. She does not want a vacuum cleaner. Moreover, a vacuum cleaner tells her that her husband did not go out and search for something meaningful to her. Almost all of this remains lost on him as he sits dumbfounded. 

 Oddly enough, this scenario played itself out long before the Ricardos or Jeffersons ever graced the small screen. The same scene unfolds itself in the Bible. Malachi records that Israel has taken on the role of the dense spouse while God explains that gift-giving reveals the nature of a relationship. God speaks to the people through the prophet saying, “You are offering improper sacrifices on my altar, yet you ask, ‘How have we offended you?’” (Mal. 1:7).

 Malachi describes the sacrifices Israel has offered to the God of the universe: “blind” and “lame” (v. 8). More importantly their second-rate offerings have sent a clear message to God about Israel’s devotion to Him—or their lack thereof. 

 Humans have only one gift worthy of God: to live our whole lives as sacrifices to him (Rom. 12:1). So if we care, if we love God and want to show it, we ask ourselves this: What message do the gifts we offer God say about our relationship with him? Do those gifts make it plain to those around us that God holds the highest place in our lives?  —J. R. Watkins

Prayer:

Lord, I want to offer you the only gift I have worthy of you: my whole life. Please forgive me when I fall short of offering you the first place. Help me to make you the highest priority for myself and my loved ones.

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

And his kingdom will have no end.

Photo credit: The Creative Exchange on Unsplash