My Christmas Gift to You

When I was a kid, the Sears catalog that came before Christmas was called the Wish List Catalog. It was big and thick and filled with marvelous color-filled pages of wonderful toys and games. We would dog-ear the pages that had things we wanted Santa to bring us, and show our parents so they could tell Santa.

(c) vetre/dollarphotoclub

I’m older now, and the Sears Wish List catalog doesn’t come any more.  Now our family has a tradition of exchanging gifts and opening them one at a time.  As you would imagine, it takes quite a while. 

Most of us don’t need anything more. Our needs are met. The gifts that we give and receive are lovely and we appreciate them, but they aren’t necessary for our survival.

Still there are things we might wish for, or more aptly put, long for. Amy Grant wrote and recorded a song a few years back about some of those things. It is called “Grown-up Christmas List”.

Here are the words to the chorus:

No more lives torn apart, that wars would never start, and time would heal all hearts.
Everyone would have a friend, and right would always win, and love would never end.
This is my grown-up Christmas list.

As much as I love Amy’s list, my personal list is a bit different. If I could deliver gifts to your house right now, here’s what I would give you:

Hope – Whatever you may have suffered in the past or are facing right now, there is hope for the future.  Even if the circumstances don’t change, we can.  And there is hope in that.

Faith – In yourself; you are enough. You have what it takes. In God; He loves you more than you can imagine and wants to bless you.

Joy – There are beautiful moments in each day when we have eyes to see them. I wish for you to experience joy in those moments.

Love – Rich, warm relationships filled with tenderness, intimacy, and humor.

Lastly, I would give you a vision of your own epic story, and the part you play in the overall story of history. You are writing that story each and every moment that you live. I’d love you to write a story that you want to remember for your whole life.

I can’t give you all those things simply by wishing it so. I can help you develop the gifts of hope, faith, joy, love, and story so that your life shines as a gift to others.

I leave you with a song. I wrote it for my sister and brother-in-law when they were getting married. They were about to start a new chapter in their story together.  Each of us is about to start a new chapter in our life story too.  Thus, the message in this song applies to each of us today just as much as it did to them.

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Write your own history. Write it with love.

What gift would you dearly love that would change your life?  Share in the comments  by clicking here.

 

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One thought on “My Christmas Gift to You”

  1. What a great gift! Thank you!

    I, too, remember the Wish Book well and how fun it was to dream about what was in it!

    I enjoyed reading your Christmas email, and especially your 4 “gift” items. Your question about what gift we would like that would change our lives made me pause and really consider.

    I feel like I already have HOPE; I’ve always been a hopefully person and find that it gets me thru hard times in life when I potentially could otherwise lose faith or get discouraged.

    I also have FAITH that God loves me and blesses me; but, perhaps, I sometimes lack in faith that I am enough.

    I see JOY (and beauty) constantly and never take it for granted. One of my gifts is the ability to capture joy thru photography so that I can experience and share it again and again.

    I am also blessed with a loving family and some great friends.

    So….I guess the gift I would wish for myself is strength….to always remember that I can get thru the hard times, that I am always enough, that good things will come to me….just maybe not how I envision them. Being unemployed for the past 10 months, people often tell me that they pray for me to find a job; they know I desperately need it. I actually pray that God puts me where I’m supposed to be, wherever that is. My next great opportunity will come, but in the meantime I will keep striving for the strength I need to get there.

    Happy New Year!

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