The Best Christmas Present Ever

(A warm welcome to those who may be visiting here for the first time by linking from The Concord Journal to this corner of the blogosphere.)

The leaders of faith communities in Concord rotate authorship of a weekly column titled Voices of Faith in the Concord Journal. My turn comes round again this week and I'm pleased to share this story with you here.

The Best Christmas Present Ever

He used to stop by about once a month just to talk – and talk he did with a keen and critical eye on things religious and political and an Irish born sense of humor to match. Our conversations were equal parts spiritual direction and political debate, brotherly bantering and shared sadness over the many faces of injustice.

By nature he was, and by nurture he became even more, a self-sufficient man and yet one who ached to be loved. He especially longed to know that he was loved by God – with whom he had a life-long sparring match. Unfortunately, his early church experience had done little to convince him of God’s love and much to make him deeply doubt it.

Over a few years’ time he shared with me his personal oral history, recorded in my heart and memories if not on tape. Especially sharp with detail were stories of his youth, his love affair with horses and the adventures of making his way in the world.

I don’t know which I enjoyed more: his stories or the look in his eyes as he told them. His words told the tale while his eyes invited me into his soul and I found that, indeed, a sacred place to visit.

On a late October morning, complaining about the commercialism of Christmas items for sale alongside bags of candy for Halloween, he segued to a remembrance of an early Christmas when his heart was set on only one gift: a subscription to a magazine called Boy’s Cinema. And he’d made sure that his mother and father knew of his wish. Come December 25th he found other gifts that Father Christmas had left for him but not the one he so dearly wanted. He was old enough to know that it was his parents who hadn’t delivered and that made things even sadder for him. Father Christmas might not have known what he wanted but his parents did and they could have easily afforded the gift he had asked for. Sadly, this wasn’t the first time a cherished hope had gone unfulfilled.

It’s painfully early in life that a child can learn to expect to be disappointed. Some of our earliest disappointments are the ones that shape our souls and how we see everything – even how we see God.

My friend’s story joined my own soul-shaping memories in the place where my heart’s hopes and hurts are collected and guarded. Perhaps you have such a place in your heart, too.

A few days later it took only a few hours on the internet to locate an issue of Boy’s Cinema, dated close to my friend’s youth, at a used-book shop in Australia. I ordered it and was pleased with the condition in which it arrived. I remember wrapping it in red tissue paper and attaching a store-bought bow to top it off.

He stopped by in early December and we talked for about an hour. When he was ready to take his leave I produced the gift from my desk drawer. He was embarrassed not to have a gift for me and I assured him that the wit and wisdom he brought to each visit were more than generous gifts.

He opened the package and for several long minutes simply looked at the magazine until the tears from his eyes began to fall upon it. Then he looked up and, as had happened so many times before, his gaze invited me into his soul as he asked me if I knew how much this meant to him. Through my tears I told him yes, I knew.

I believe a corner of Michael’s heart was healed in opening that gift and I know a corner of my heart was healed in giving it. At least for a moment we both knew that we are indeed loved in the heart of our hurts and hopes - the very place where God’s heart aches to be with us.

An old, used issue of Boy’s Cinema was the best Christmas gift I ever gave someone. And, you know, it was the best Christmas gift I ever received.

-ConcordPastor