What is the weirdest or most inappropriate gift you have ever received?
There was a long standing joke in my family about a "packet of stale peanuts". The source of the joke was one of my brothers’ twenty-first birthday, where he was more than a little peeved to find he had been given a simple pack of peanuts from a relative, and on opening them, find that they weren’t even fresh! And so, it became the standard response to the question of what you may have received for Christmas or a birthday, or even what you might like. “A packet of stale peanuts!”
Last Sunday, we sang “We three kings” at our Christmas production, and as we sang, my mind went back to an observation someone made at some point wondering what possessed this king/wiseman/magi to think that myrhh, a product often associated with the embalming process, was a gift suitable for an infant.
“Myrrh is mine: it's bitter perfume
Breaths a life of gathering gloom.
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding dying,
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.”
Although that discussion continued by suggesting that there was possibly a prophetic element to this gift, pre-empting Jesus’ death, I am not sure that Mary, with all her “pondering” of these things in her heart, would have appreciated the gesture.
However, it got me thinking about the sort of things God likes to give us. Asides from the “gifts and abilities” He imparts to us, I reflected that there are many other “gifts” that God bestows upon us that, at times we either don’t understand, or even less, appreciate.
I am reminded of a number of people who have prayed for patience and have subsequently noticed an increased opportunity to exercise patience. I wonder if sometimes God gives us the gift of “hard times” or “difficult people”, or even a difficult task He asks us to do that has a similar outcome - to help us grow more like Him. And just as with any other gift we don't really like, we can respond by either rejecting the gift, the giver, or simply by replying to God at some level, “Yeah, nah, but thanks anyway”, because it all seems too hard.
As we approach Christmas, that time where gift giving seems central to our celebrations, perhaps it is an opportunity to reflect on the “gifts” God is offering now, and how He might like us to respond to them. As weird and “ungift-like” they might seem, you never can be quite sure what you need around the next corner!
