Don't Walk Past the Gift

I enjoy playing tricks with Christmas gifts.  I like to disguise packages.  I give clues without giving away the secret.  I add rocks to the contents of boxes to make them heavier.  But of all the Christmas present tricks I’ve played, this one is my favorite.  I bought Linda a necklace as a Christmas present and was preparing to wrap it and put in beneath our tree.  How boring! I thought.  I had a better idea.  I took the necklace out of the box and took it to our daughter Elizabeth’s room.  Atop her book and toy shelves sat a collectible doll--a doll which she was not, at her tender young age, yet allowed to touch.  I put the necklace around the doll’s neck, in plain view, and waited to see what would happen.  Linda walked past that shelf and that doll and her necklace many times every day, but saw nothing.  Every day I waited for a telephone call at work from her, declaring her great discovery, but she continued to see nothing.  Finally, Christmas came and she opened the little jewelry box.  Inside it was a card which read,

I'm sorry that this box is bare,

But Elizabeth's doll had nothing to wear.

See the doll shelf for your gift. 

Finally, she walked to the shelf, examined the dolls and found her gift.  I was amazed at how she walked past that doll time after time and never saw that it displayed a gift for her.  Linda is not alone.  Many of us do that very same thing with the entire Christmas season.  We may not walk by our Christmas gifts from each other and not notice them, but we will do something far more tragic.  Many of us will walk through the season and never see the gift it offers us from God. 

In Luke 2, we read the story of Mary and Joseph taking the infant Jesus to the temple to dedicate him to God.  As I think about their journey to the temple, I imagine how many people saw this little family en route to Jerusalem.  Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus came face to face with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people on that trip, but none of them, not even the priests in the temple, saw this baby for who He really was, a gift of hope from God.  No one that is, except a man named Simeon, and a woman named Anna.  They are singled out in the story as those rare persons who saw much more than the dedication of a child.  They saw, in the face of Jesus, the gift of God’s salvation.

May we not walk through life and never see the gift it offers to us from God.  May we, like Simeon and Anna, be counted among those who have eyes to see the gift and hearts ready to receive it and rejoice.