“…one gift replacing another…”
--John 1:16
Gift giving has been on my mind lately. Tis the season, you know. In particular, I have been thinking about this one friend of ours who has sent us a gift box every year for the past –almost 30 years it seems. She was a friend of mine in college, and over the years we have kept in touch by phone and mail, but our lives have gone off in their different directions. After college she moved back to Denver. She married, has 3 grown sons and a daughter. My wife and I are godparents to her daughter and she is godmother to one of ours. Like most people, we keep in touch by phone call and Facebook and letters, and remind each other how much we are loved. But, Barb is different from most friends. She takes this whole friendship thing to another level. And it includes gift-wrapping! Every year just before Christmas she sends us a rather large box (or two--sometimes) filled with wrapped presents. And when I say filled, I mean filled. She sends us a box full of presents; multiple presents for each member of the household. Books, toys, jewelry, clothing, candy, kitchenware, herbs from her garden. I think she even sent the cats a present one year. Each gift is wrapped and labeled, often with a silly note. And, keep in mind, she’s been doing this without fail for almost 30 years now. Some of the presents are silly, but some are beautiful, and so perfect—they seem like gifts from God.
For instance, a couple of years back she gave me a black plastic fountain pen. It came in a goofy retro ‘50s packaging and looked like it was something she may have just tossed in at the last minute—thinking: Herman likes to write. He might have fun with this. And yet, it quickly become my favorite pen—and now, I do all my writing with it. I think it may have even changed the way I write! The pen seemed to be filled not with ink, but with words, with ideas, with poems, with inspiration. But, I guess what it was actually filled with was love.
We joke sometimes about it, but it has become a part of our Christmas that we all look forward to. Not the presents themselves as much as the box! It has become for us a sign of Christmas, of the promise of Christmas. Has the box from Barb arrived yet?
There have been years when her gifts were just about the only presents under our tree. And though we have on occasion reciprocated with boxes of biscotti and books and crafts and other homemade items, we have never met her level of generosity, nor have we ever been as regular and timely. Yet still, regardless of our efforts, every year, the box from Barb arrives and on Christmas morning we open it with delight. Her generosity, her constant and abundant generosity came to mind as I was thinking about this phrase from the beginning of John’s Gospel.
“…one gift replacing another…”
In other translations it reads something like “grace in place of grace already given…” or “grace upon grace.” Gift upon gift… Whichever translation, I hear in it a statement of overflowing abundance and generosity. A vision of God’s love; a seemingly bottomless box of personally wrapped presents poured forth again and again! As soon as we open one gift, we find another. And if we aren’t happy with that, there is one more and one more after that.
Reading God’s word, I hear not a message of judgment and warning, so much as a message of love and generosity. Again and again, the prophets remind us of God’s tender love for His creation. They remind us again and again of His seemingly endless mercy and the abundance of His grace, His love for His creation. Each time we fail, we stumble and fall, He is there to lift us up and offer us again some new sign of His love, always replacing one gift with another, one grace with another, one covenant laid over another. Until finally He gives Himself wholly and utterly into our hands. Taking upon Himself all our sins—our stumbles and falls, our rejection of His many gifts—He becomes the gift itself. Unexpected, undeserved, He is the gift.
Like that box from Barbara, that box overflowing with gift upon gift, God’s love comes to us grace upon grace and here at Christmas we are called to come together in joy over the abundance of God’s love. It comes to us again and again, renewed again and again in great and small ways alike—even in the simplest and humblest gifts, individually wrapped and waiting for us to open with delight. It may look like a Pez dispenser or a bookmark or a box of tea, a pair of socks, or even a newborn baby in a borrowed manger. Thank you Barb for helping me remember, the gift is always love.
