Spiritual Gift Giving

Do you recognize that woman?

Tis the season of giving and receiving, right? I just heard that a church around the block from my church is hosting an alternative Christmas gift market where people can give to local non-profits in the honor of family and/or friends. What an awesome idea! This is the kind of giving I am sure Jesus wants for his birthday. What better way to celebrate the Savior of the world who came into our broken world full of promise, hope, healing and peace than to give to those organizations who daily reach out in the same way to the least, lost and poor among us.

This kind of alternative gift giving got me thinking of a different kinds of gifts we often talk about at church--"spiritual gifts." As in 1 Corinthians 12, or a personal example:"My spiritual gift is preaching and passion for justice for the voiceless." Or another way to think about it--that innate calling, or God-given gift that we know we have been uniquely given to use in our world somehow. I like how theologian Howard Thurman said it, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive." Spiritual gifts--those God-given gifts that make us come alive; gifts that we've been given to transform our world. Gifts that if we don't use, will go wasted because they are the unique gifts God has beautifully and wonderfully knit us together with to use for his glory while we walk this earth.

Unfortunately during this consumer-driven time of year, we tend to forget the gifts we've been given, and so easily get distracted and focus on what others have to the point that we have to have what our friends have, we see in magazines, we touch as we shop in crowded malls...this is the season of coveting, and thus the season of routinely and all too easily breaking God's 10th commandment, and we might as well say the 1st, 2nd and 4th commandments as well.

It's easy to lose ourselves in all the advertisements, paper, ribbon, glamor and glitz of our over-sanitized and consumer-driven season Christmas has become today. A far cry from the first Christmas that happened in a manger. Christmas today has become a season of keeping up with the Joneses where for every $1.00 earned, the average American spends $1.50. I can't help but notice--especially during this time of year--that we try to be someone we are not; we try to live beyond our means so that we can give and receive  the perfect gift, so that we can appear to have everything together. Christmas often brings out a person in us that is not so Christ-like and does not bring honor to God's name and does not do good for his kingdom in this world. Such a season of pretending, keeping-up-with, buying and giving leaves many exhausted. What was it that the angels announced when they appeared to the shepherds--wasn't it something about joy and peace? And yet many of our expectations of a good Christmas is wrapped up in the gifts under our tree. Can joy and peace be found in such gifts?

Like my neighbor church's alternative Christmas market, I think if we just offer ourselves as we are with the gifts we've been given, such a gift would honor Jesus more than the priciest gift we can go in debt to afford. Such a gift would bring true joy and peace into our world, not leaving us exhausted and over-spent--literally and figuratively--at the end of the Christmas season. How are you giving of your spiritual gifts this season and every season of your life for the glory of God? Do you believe that through these gifts we've all been given, God can work in and through us to bring about change in our world that would usher in true joy and peace the way the shepherds and all those who witnessed Jesus' birth experienced? Before you buy your next present, think about how you can use what God has already given you as a gift to your family and friends.