(Still shopping for Christmas? Remembering gifts you've given and gifts you've received? Today's post is an annual one, intended as a "starter" for your own reflection and prayer. It's the story of the best Christmas present I ever gave, the best Christmas present I ever received. My daily Pause for Prayer follows after the story...
The Best Christmas Present
Michael would stop by about once a month just to talk with a keen and critical eye on matters religious and political and an Irish-born sense of humor to match. Our conversations were equal parts spiritual direction and political debate, brotherly bantering.
By nature he was, and by nurture he became a self-sufficient man. One who ached to be loved, he 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 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 and around 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 which I found to be a sacred place to visit.
On a late October morning, complaining about the commercialism of Christmas items for sale alongside bags of Halloween candy, he segued to a remembrance of an early Christmas when his heart was set on only one gift: a copy of Boy’s Cinema Annual. He’d made sure his parents knew his wish but come the morning of the 25th he found several gifts under the tree but not the one he so dearly wanted. He was old enough to understand that even if Santa Claus hadn't known his desire his parents did and that they could have easily afforded the present he'd 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.
Later that day, it took me only a few hours online to locate (at a used-book shop in Australia) an issue of Boy’s Cinema Annual dated close to my friend’s youth. 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 present for me and I assured him that the wit and wisdom his visits brought me were more than generous gifts. He opened the package and for several long minutes simply looked at the magazine until his tears began to fall upon it. Then he looked up and, as so many times before, his gaze invited me into his soul. He asked me if I knew how much this meant to him. Through my tears I told him yes, I thought I did.
I believe a wounded corner of Michael’s soul was healed in opening that gift and I know a place in my own heart was restored in giving it. If only for a moment we both knew for sure that love finds a home between our hopes and hurts - the very place where God aches to be with us, to love and heal us.
An old, used issue of Boy’s Cinema Annual was the best Christmas I ever gave. And you know, it was the best Christmas gift I ever received.
Let's Pause for Prayer...
Lord,
Teach me to recognize the true gifts,
the real gifts, the authentic gifts
that are ours to share with one another...
Preserve my heart, my soul and my imagination
from wanting what I don't need,
from desiring what I ought not have,
from seeking what's passing and unimportant...
Teach me, Lord,
to long for and to share with others
those inner gifts of love and patience,
kindness and generosity,
selflessness and mercy:
gifts that are always mine to give
and always needed
in others' hearts, both near and far...
Teach me to receive as well as to give, Lord:
give me an open heart,
never too proud to accept and welcome
all those around me who offer my heart gifts
shared from theirs...
May the gifts I offer others, Lord,
bring healing and wholeness
where others have walked roughly
and carelessly in tender places...
May the gifts that others offer me
find a home in my soul
and bring whatever healing and mending
my heart needs...
And always, Lord,
open my heart to the gifts you offer,
the gifts I truly need,
the gifts that bring your peace...
Amen.
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