The Best Gifts

Like the deep humming of a great engine starting up, you feel it before you hear it. Today is the first of December, and the buffer of Thanksgiving, which these days barely slows the onslaught of candy canes and red noses, is but a memory and a sinkful of leftovers containers. It's on, people.

But here is a little secret. This turning I've been writing about, the shift others have been musing on, has a bonus. Yes, we're saying yes to fewer gifts, fewer time commitments, simpler decorations. So thus we say yes, to fewer moments standing in line, less stress, fewer wardrobe concerns. Yes to less hurry. Yes to more cups of hot chocolate with our kids, yes, to another read aloud chapter. Yes to making room for the coming One in our hearts.

One of the things about having the sort of year I've had is that the way we've always done things doesn't work this year. And as we are re-imagining how we can incarnate hope and celebration on the landscape before us, I'm realizing the nature of the best gifts. They're unasked for, unexpected, not so much received as experienced.

• the tenderness of a Pop pop making pancakes and bacon with a six year old grandson
• a brave nine year old swinging out on a vine, his face pure joy
• "Me and Juilo Down By the Schoolyard" coming out of the speakers in the van, bringing non-stop smiles ("I'm on my way./ I don't know where I'm going./I'm on my way./I'm taking my time but I don't know where.")
• A shaft of light, making a photograph I don't even need to compose, just click the shutter and whisper a thanks.
  
• Arriving at the in-laws just in time to salvage a solid wood door to replace our very ugliest hollow one.
• Four Kemps laughing out loud at old Cosby Show episodes on DVD.
  
• A little brother laying aside a piece of his candy to save for his big brother.
• "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," sung with gentle yet thrilling grace by a quartet, and singing "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light" as the first Advent candle at church is lit.

Just a list, a motley patchwork of delight and reverence, glee and grace. Every single day has these moments, moments we cannot plan for, that cannot be bought or wrapped, gifts in the purest sense.

And let's face it, Jesus is the ultimate gift no one could have expected. The prophesies were there, but who could have imagined God clothed in silken baby flesh, the Word made inarticulate, Creator helpless in the arms of an unwed teenager? And yet as we stand at the stable door, as we put down our packages and our busyness and our expectations, the utter perfection of this Gift, sent from the Father, shines.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:14-16

Wrapped in our skin, with hands that would do work and share bread and lift in prayer, with feet made for dusty roads and the wooden hulls of fishing boats and for nails, He is a double gift: an empathetic Redeemer. He shatters and exceeds our assumptions; He is outrageously more than we try to make Him, because He made Himself less for our sakes.

Even a glimpse inside such a package, and the vision we long for our children to see demands we make room, clear the clutter, claim the time, be willing to be revolutionary by embracing less than we could own, to receive the More that awaits us.