I had a late Christmas with my North Carolina family this past weekend. My twin grandboys, Luke and Sam, got another round of presents. One of them was a cool kit of Lego blocks in a plastic container. The 15 blocks could be made into 4 farm animals. I thought the contents of the container were incredibly cool and loved putting the sheep, chicken(especially cool), pig and cow together. Sam, however, saw no value in the contents. He was absorbed in the plastic container. He played endlessly with it, waving it around, folding it shut and then pulling it open. “Sam”, I said, “Look at the cool animals we can make”. No interest. He only had eyes for the container.
It seems to happen that way with kids. So often the package is valued more than the contents. The box has more intrigue than what’s inside. That’s okay when you’re a kid. People think it’s cute that you’d rather play with the box instead of the present, but you get to an age where that would no longer be cute, it would be concerning. Have we gotten to that age with God’s gift of Jesus? Hopefully we’ve moved past valuing the “packaging” more than the gift. Jesus gets wrapped up with a lot of stuff each Christmas, wrappings which are decorative, tasty and delightful. But the substance of value is Jesus.
I like that Christmas is Dec 25th. It lets us end the year being reminded of the incredible, invaluable gift of God’s Son. That in turn lets us begin the new year embracing that gift and having it enrich and direct our lives. Have we come of age? Happy New Year!
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